


And Now For Something Completely Different

by nhpw



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bottom Misha Collins, Did I stress the kink hard enough, Dom Jensen Ackles, Dom/sub, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Gentle Dom Jensen, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication is the Real Villain Here, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Porn with Feelings, Sappy Ending, Spanking, Sub Misha Collins, Threesome - F/M/M, Top Jensen Ackles, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vicki and Danneel are smarter than them both, sex as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:41:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nhpw/pseuds/nhpw
Summary: It wasn't supposed to mean anything. Just a couple of guys with a mutual interest banging it out to blow off steam, for the length of Misha's contract with Supernatural. Good, clean, kinky fun, no strings attached.It really... wasn't supposed to mean anything at all.But it did.It really did.
Relationships: Jensen Ackles/Danneel Harris, Jensen Ackles/Misha Collins, Misha Collins/Darius Marder, Misha Collins/Vicki Vantoch
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	1. The New Guy

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> This fic... to be terribly cliche, this fic was a true labor of love. 
> 
> I started writing "And Now For Something Completely Different" in January 2019 after being inspired by a discussion with [Serenhawk](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Serenhawk) about Cockles BDSM, and how although Misha is often the presumed Dominant, Jensen has within him a quiet fire that could be more Dominant than it seems. That if Jensen was a Dom, he was probably a very gentle one.
> 
> Aaaaand what was meant to be a quick PWP quickly morphed into a completely different sort of Cockles anthology than you've seen before. 
> 
> This fic is FINISHED but will be posted in the coming days in fits and starts, because I'm a full-time employee and a full-time mom AND a 2nd grade teacher right now, so I do what I can with the time that I have. 
> 
> Here it is, with my well wishes to all of you in these trying times, and my hopes that this brings a smile to all your faces.

_ Summer 2008 _

The new guy was weird. Weird name, weird clothes, weird acting choices. Weird  _ everything _ .

The new guy was also extremely hot. So hot, in fact, that Jensen found himself staring in a very not-heterosexual way when they were in the middle of filming. And New Guy - Misha - stared right back, intense and unblinking, like he’d gotten the message they were having eye sex and he was all for it. And.

Yeah, OK. Jensen definitely wanted to fuck the new guy.

Danneel was obnoxiously nonchalant about the whole thing, and while he was on that subject, that  _ really  _ fucking rattled him. It was a different kind of nonchalance than she usually exhibited on his requests for casual hookups. They had an agreement about being on set and having a solid OK for non-penetrative sexual encounters, because this wasn’t exactly the first rodeo for either of them. They loved each other deeply. Jensen was even pretty sure he was going to marry her sooner rather than later. But they were by no means a monogamous couple. It fit neither their personalities nor their lifestyle, and it appealed to neither of them.

That they agreed on that from the start without argument was one of the many reasons he loved her as much as he did.

So it shouldn’t have bothered him when Danneel’s response to his desire to maybe fool around a bit with Misha while he was on set was to bounce her eyebrows and say, “ _ Oooh _ , he’s a cute one. I might even give you a pass to slide into home this time, if he’s willing.” But it did. It bothered him  _ a lot _ .

He took the pass anyway, though, because Misha was only slated for six episodes, and because his casual flirting and then blatant flirting were returned in kind during the filming of what was supposed to be the second-to-last one. 

This episode was FUBAR anyway, and saying he needed to get away, to go take five in his trailer for mental health’s sake, wasn’t a lie. He was desperately trying to make the chemistry work between Dean and Anna, but he just… it wasn’t there. Probably because it wasn’t there with the actress.  _ Probably  _ because Jensen really wanted Misha to be on the other end of his dialogue instead of her, but whatever. “Misha,” he barked over his shoulder, and crooked his fingers to indicate the other man should follow him.

He had no idea why, but there was no doubt in his mind that his order would be followed. He just  _ knew _ . Sure enough, as he cleared the lot and the sounds of cast and crew died behind him, there was the definite sound of one pair of feet shuffling across the pavement.

He reached his trailer door and held it open for Misha to step inside ahead of him. When they were both inside the trailer, he closed and locked the door, and then turned to stare into Misha’s eyes, rubbing his palms together.

“What’s up, man?” Misha asked, but as Jensen searched the other man’s features, there wasn’t really any confusion in them. Misha knew  _ exactly  _ what was up, but he wanted Jensen to say it.

Fine. “I’m not imagining things, am I?”

“What things?”

He chuckled, low and unamused, and shook his head at the floor. “Man, you’re… something.” There was no immediate response, so Jensen looked back up and locked their eyes. “I flirted. You flirted back. I flirted harder, and you looked like you’d fall to your knees right then and there if I asked you to. How’m I doin’ so far? You want me to keep going?”

“Ah.” Misha nodded and drew his lips into a thin line. “No, that’s, uh. You’re more astute than I thought.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t think you were doing it on purpose,” he clarified. “The flirting.”

“Oh, I see. But you, you were definitely doing it on purpose, is that right?”

“I mean, I generally know when I’m flirting, yeah. But I’m also not a mind reader. I had no idea what you were thinking.”

“I’m--” Jensen’s hands found their way instinctively to his hips and he stood and stared at Misha with narrowed eyes. “OK, you know what? Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna shut up, and we’re going to go back to the bed and work this out with a good ol’ fashioned exchange of handies.” Misha’s eyebrows raised in tandem and he opened his mouth as though he might argue.

Jensen leaned forward and kissed him good and proper, just to put an end to all of that. The fact that it was a really, really good and filthy kiss was just a nice bonus.

When they parted, Jensen raised his eyebrows with intent.

Misha turned to head deeper into Jensen’s trailer without another word.

***

Jensen Ackles was weird. Weird sense of humor, weird drop of his voice when he stepped into character, weird  _ everything _ .

Jensen Ackles was also undeniably hot and  _ totally  _ flirting with Misha.

“Hon, if you want to hook up with him, it’s totally fine. He’s a hot piece of ass. I’d do him.”

Vicki was no help. He told her so, and she laughed, and he hung up, but to his credit he did text her after the events in Jensen’s trailer.

Jensen had called him a brat in the middle of making out, and Misha supposed he wasn’t wrong.

Jensen had also been unbelievably tender in taking Misha apart. The initial kiss had been hard, biting, clearly an assertion of control. But once they were out of the kitchen and back on Jensen’s bed, Jensen had kissed him again as they settled horizontally, and  _ that  _ kiss had been soft and exploratory and made little fireworks explode behind Misha’s eyelids.

And  _ then _ .

_ Then  _ Jensen had given Misha the most absolutely mindblowing handjob he’d ever received in his entire life. He’d settled Misha between his own legs, Misha’s back against Jensen’s chest, and worked his dick like they had all the time in the world - first over his pants, and then from the inside, and then finally, blessedly, when Misha was a writhing, pleading mess in his lap, he’d wrapped his hand around the width and given the head a swipe with his thumb and  _ holy shit _ .

Then he’d started working Misha’s neck and earlobe over with his mouth from behind, murmuring words of praise against the skin, and it hadn’t been long before Misha lost it over Jensen’s fist.

He’d looked sheepishly at Jensen afterward. “I don’t know if I can follow that,” he’d said, but Jensen had just smiled, given a shake of his head, and pulled Misha to him to continue their makeout session. 

Jensen had ground himself against Misha’s hip and his oversensitive dick until he came in Dean Winchester’s jeans.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Hmmm texting my wife,” he mumbled, glancing up at Jensen. They were dressed and presentable again, and Misha was sitting on Jensen’s couch while Jensen got bottles of water for them both out of his fridge. “Thanks.”

“For the water or the sex?”

“Both, I think.”

Jensen grinned. “You’re welcome. So you’re… I’d-- this was fun. Good. You know.”

“It was.” Misha nodded and smiled placidly at Jensen, trying to figure out what the other man was trying to say. For the life of him he couldn’t decide if this was a “one and done” encounter, or if they might try it again. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, and he sure as hell didn’t know what Jensen had in mind.

“So, uh.” Jensen sat down in his recliner and took a long drink from his own water bottle, and Misha tried very hard not to think about how attractive it was when he throat bobbed up and down when he swallowed. Then Jensen seemed to gather his courage, and his eyes were locked with Misha’s as he asked, “Your wife gives you a pass?”

Misha sighed and smiled. “Not exactly.”

“OK, hey, wait, man I don’t-- cheating isn’t--”

“What? No--  _ nooooo  _ no no.” He waved his hand in the air and gave a genuine little chuckle under his breath. “We’re poly. Polyamorous,” he clarified, thinking of Vicki and… how the hell did she explain it to people? Maybe he should just throw a copy of her book at Jensen.

But the look on Jensen’s face shifted slightly, and a soft, “Ooohhhh,” escaped as he nodded in understanding. “So it’s not, like-- OK, so this one time, I was in a movie.”

“Good for you.”

“No, no, listen. I played this guy who was in a relationship with, like, a woman -- Marilyn Monroe, actually - and another guy. Not like a fling, but like, they were all in love. I’m not-- Ugh. Sorry. I’m doing a shit job of talking this out and now I’m rambling, I’m sorry.”

As Jensen’s face flushed in embarrassment and he looked down at his lap, Misha felt nothing but amusement toward his… friend? Coworker? Lover?... toward Jensen. “It’s OK. I’m enjoying watching you dig this hole for yourself.” At Jensen’s responding facial expression, Misha tried to pull himself out of his own amusement and into some sort of serious explanation. “Vicki and I have been together for a long time,” he started. It seemed logical to start at the beginning. “We were each other’s firsts, for  _ everything _ . And for awhile I thought we might be each other’s only. But we grew, and we changed, and we both had some feelings… we wanted to… we’re both a little bit not straight,” he fumbled.  But his fumble appeared to put Jensen more at ease. “Hey, man. Welcome to the club.”

“Right. So anyway, uh. We share a partner sometimes, or we have something on our own. She knew I was interested in you. It’s fine.” On cue, his phone pinged in his pocket, and he pulled it up, chuckling at the message. “She congratulates us on getting our shit together so quickly.”

Jensen laughed, too. “So it’s not so much a pass as it is… an… open door.”

“Eh… guarded door. But yeah.” And then an odd silence settled over them, and Misha tried very hard to fight his urge to fill it with mindless conversation.

“Let’s do this again.” Jensen’s proclamation broke the silence in a sudden burst, like he’d gotten a boost of confidence from their idle chat. “Like, you know. As a casual thing.”

“Right. Nobody’s buying anybody flowers and candy for Valentine’s Day,” Misha clarified.

“And, you know. You’re uh… you’re just here for a little while, so.”

“Right. So it’s just for that little while. For the length of my contract.”

“For the length of your contract.”

It already hurt, and that should have sent Misha running for the hills, but he didn’t. He stayed. For the length of his contract.


	2. The New Deal

_ February 2009 _

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes you do.” Danneel’s giggle unnerved Jensen, and he found himself responding with an honest-to-goodness  _ whine _ . She turned away from where she’d set herself to task arranging comfortable body pillows on the floor and pouted at him over her shoulder. “Jensen.”

“What.”

She heaved a heavy sigh and then abandoned the task completely and crossed the living room to hug him loosely around his waist. “It’s just sex, right?”

“I mean, yeah...” He was still whining, but he couldn’t help it. 

“And so far he’s been receptive to bottoming?”

“Very.” He worried over a lot of things regarding his and Misha’s evolving relationship, but their roles in bed was not one of them.

“And you’re getting submissive vibes from him?”

“I mean…” He turned away from her, threw his arms out to the sides, and then clutched his hair with his fingers and tugged before turning back to face her. “Yeah? And you know, honestly, the guy’s brain just never stops, except when I get a little… you know. I can see it short-circuit. He’s just naturally responsive, you know.  _ That way _ .”

“So talk to him about it. What’s the worst that could happen? He says no, and you just keep going the way you’re going, maybe he pulls back completely and you lose your workplace fuckb-- ohhhhh.”

“‘Oh’? What ‘oh’?”

“You  _ like  _ him.”

“Of course I like him. He’s a great guy, smart, handsome, and if I didn’t like him, I wouldn’t have been casually fucking him for the past six months.”

“No. No, it’s more than that. You  _ like _ like him. Like you don’t want to bring this up because you’re afraid of scaring him off.” She pointed an accusatory finger at his chest, but not in a spiteful way - more like she’d just solved a mystery she’d been puzzling at for weeks. She must’ve gotten what she wanted in his expression, too, because her attitude returned to a nonchalant shrug. “Can’t say I blame you. He’s definitely all of those things you just listed. Probably more, too.” She paused, then pounced on him like a cat. “What’s his dick like?”

“Deedee.” But she kept him pinned by her expression, so he gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes and said, “It’s nice.” A pause. She was still looking at him  _ like that _ . “Really nice. Like.” He fumbled for words for a few seconds before finally blurting out, “It’s everything I love in a submissive’s dick, OK? Smaller than me, uncircumcised, definitely a grower, and  _ fucking hell _ Deedee I get so much gratification out of watching it come alive for me…” He trailed off and offered a pleading expression before adding with a quiet whine, “And don’t even get me started on his  _ mouth _ , Christ on a Christmas cracker he’s--!” He stopped, because she was giggling at him.

“We’re definitely having sex while you tell me more about all of his sexual talents.”

“I hate you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come here and fuck me, Grumpy.”

***

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes you do.” Vicki cameinto Misha’s office from where she’d been standing in the doorway. She sidled up to his desk and picked up the contract he’d been staring at for the better part of 20 minutes without turning a single page. “You’re going to sign the contract. You love working on this show.”

“I mean yeah, but…”

She slapped his hand away when he tried to take the contract back from her. “But nothing,” she said. “You’re going to keep working on Supernatural for as long as they’ll have you, and you’re going to keep playing around with that gorgeous man, and we both know it. You can have this back when you’re ready to sign it. Not before.”

“It was just supposed to be for a little while!” he whined, rocking back in his chair and tilting his head up to look for answers on the ceiling. “On both accounts! And now it’s-- it’s-- why do they even  _ want  _ me?”

“Are you talking about Jensen or the show?”

“Jensen. Work. Both. I don’t  _ knoooowww _ !” He heaved an exasperated sigh. “We said for the length of my contract. That was the agreement. This is an entirely new contract! So does that mean the deal is off? Or did we really mean for the length of my time on the show? What do I do?”

“What would you  _ like  _ to do?”

It infuriated him that she was being so calm, and he found himself unable to reply, so he just ground his teeth and glared at her.

She leaned in and planted a kiss on his nose. “OK fine. Let me put it another way. You’re going to sign this contract because it’s the best thing you’ve had put in front of you in a long,  _ long  _ time - possibly ever. It’s money in the bank, it puts meals on our table and it might just be your big break toward doing everything, and I mean  _ everything _ , you’ve ever dreamed of, personally and professionally.” She paused, her face thoughtful for a moment. “And if not, hey. It’s still going to go down as some of the best sex you’ve had outside of this house, am I right?”

He growled low in his throat, mostly because she was absolutely right, but he really, really wasn’t ready to admit it out loud. They’d been together long enough, though, that she got the message and straightened up, satisfied with the response. “As I said. You can have this back when you’re ready to sign it. Not before. I love you.”

“I’m pouting. You can’t tell me you love me when I’m pouting. It’s unfair.”

She laughed as she headed out of the room and threw back over her shoulder, “When have you ever known me to play fair? Fair’s boring. You hate boring.”

He really hated boring. Boring was stupid. But he also really, really hated when she was right.


	3. The New Terms

_ April 2009 - Sydney, Australia - All Hell Breaks Loose convention _

Now a solid four years into their working relationship, and barreling headlong into a fifth, there were few people more important to Jensen than Jared Padalecki. Jared was his best friend. His partner in crime. He listened to Jensen’s mundane rambles. He was attentive and honest and kind. And right now, it was really, really important to Jensen that he remember these things. Because right now, it was taking all of Jensen’s willpower not to rip Jared’s head off and then bend Misha over the chair he was currently sitting in and fuck him properly in front of a live audience.

...OK. That was… it was possible Jensen had a problem.

A Misha-sized problem.

As soon as they were off the stage for the day, he snagged Misha by the arm and pulled him into what looked like a supply room. He pinned the smaller man to the wall and kissed him hard enough to leave those pretty lips red and swollen because, fuck. “Gonna kill Jared,” he growled as he bit at the lowest part of Misha’s neck that he could reach with the other man’s shirt still on. “The way he bent over in front of you like that? Fuck. Not OK.  _ Mine _ .”

He felt Misha stiffen under his ministrations at that, and he pulled back slightly to look him in the eyes.

Those lovely blue pools were owl-wide. 

“Did I say something wrong?”

Misha averted his eyes immediately, and his tongue came out to lick slowly over his bottom lip.

“Misha?”

“I don’t know.” It was quiet, and directed at the floor rather than at Jensen. “I guess I wasn’t sure… if… we were still doing this.”

“Why wouldn’t we still be doing this?” Misha’s heavy sigh in response had Jensen pulling back fully to put some distance between them. “You wanna stop?”

“I thought maybe  _ you  _ would want to stop.”

“What? No, man, I’m-- we said for the length of your contract, right? And you’re coming back next season, it’s official, sooooo…”

“It’s a different contract.” Misha’s eyes darted up quickly to catch Jensen’s before returning to study the floor. “I wasn’t clear if the agreement carried over.”

He couldn’t help it; he pulled a complete bitch face. “You’re hung up on  _ semantics _ ? Are you fucking kidding me?” He brought his hands to his hips and paced away from Misha, then brought his right hand up to rake through his own hair before turning around sharply because, fuck all this  _ completely  _ in the ass. And not in the fun way. “Just. What the fuck about my behavior toward you the past couple of months has made you think for  _ one second _ that this is gonna be over just because you signed a different piece of paper to re-up?”

“I…” Misha did that lip-licking thing again, and Jensen couldn’t decide if he’d rather lick it for him or slap his cheek and tell him never to do that again because it was distracting as all hell. “This wasn’t going to be anything serious, right? I mean we agreed, no strings, no hearts around each others’ initials, no PDA, just some sex to take the edge off at work and I thought, you know, it was going to be short-term and I’m pretty sure you thought that too and then it turned out I’m sticking around for awhile, I mean, it’s going to be at least another year and what if-- I mean what if--”

“Misha.” He didn’t realize until after he’d done it that he’d pulled out his Dom Voice. He’d spoken Misha’s name as a  _ command _ . And-- no, you know what? It was the right thing to do. He pushed ahead, damn the torpedoes. “Stop. Just. Stop. OK. You want me to answer every single ‘what if’? I can’t do that. What I  _ can  _ do is tell you that right now, right up until you got all morose on me, I had every intention of making out with you against this wall and grinding into you until you were a total mess, and then taking you upstairs and fucking you good and proper before we both fall asleep so that  _ hopefully  _ you’d get the message you were mine and you’d stop whatever fuckery you and Jared were doing on the fucking stage today.”

“I’m not responsible for Jared.”

“OK, fair point, but having him bend over like that and having you play along, it-- it--”

A smirk crept across Misha’s face, and he looked up just enough to catch Jensen’s eye. “Little jealous?”

“I wanted to claw his eyes out.” Even now, the memory made his hands clench into tight fists at his sides. “And if that ain’t a good enough indicator for you that I’m still interested, then I dunno what is.”

“Are you-- do you still want to…”

He advanced on Misha again, slow and predatory this time, until their bodies were flush against each other once more. “Do I want to what?”

“Go upstairs?”

He considered the response. “I mean, my bed is up there, so I suppose so.”

“No, I mean…”

“What did you mean?”

“Jensen…”

“Use your words, Misha.  _ Ask me _ for what you want.” He’d dropped his tone an octave. He could hear the arousal in his own voice, so he was pretty sure Misha could, too.

“Jensen. I. Will you. I want you to take me upstairs and fuck me.”

“Hmmmm…”

“Please?” It was quiet, unsure. But it sounded so blessedly beautiful rolling off of Misha’s tongue that Jensen leaned in to kiss him, licking his way into the other man’s mouth as if to chase it.

“Good boy.”

***

Somewhere deep in his subconscious, Misha knew what was happening: Jensen was dominating him. Not in the  _ we’re going to have sex and I’m going to boss you around and definitely be on top _ sort of way; this was more  _ I’m going to crawl up in your psyche and take control of your mind and make your body feel amazing things but that’s not the point  _ sort of way. 

That was probably exactly why it turned him on so much.

Whatever it was, or whatever it was in the process of becoming, Misha was on board from the moment Jensen cut him off and laid down the law in that hotel storage room. The lust in his eyes was unmistakable; the fact that he was taking the entire situation completely in hand made Misha’s jeans uncomfortably tight.

His mind was quiet for the first time in weeks, he realized as Jensen locked and bolted his hotel room door and then turned to Misha with a stern expression. He opened his mouth to maybe say something, but Jensen cut him off with a tiny shake of his head. And then Jensen was kissing him - soft lips and a gently searching tongue, and it made Misha melt inside and into his arms.

Consciously, subconsciously - Misha was on board with whatever was happening here. He breathed into the kiss, letting Jensen fill his senses, overwhelm them. This… was dangerous. He knew that right now as much as he knew anything else. It was just supposed to be sex, but something else was happening here, something deeper, something  _ more _ , Misha was falling and it was--

“Stop it.”

How did he  _ do  _ that? How was he at once both soft and firm? How did he make Misha’s runaway thought train just come to a screeching halt? Was he some kind of mental Superman? 

“I said  _ stop _ . Stop thinking. Stop overanalyzing, Misha. Just  _ stop _ . From this point on, I don’t want you thinking about anything except me, got it? You listen, you do what I tell you to do, you put your entire focus on pleasing me. Do I make myself clear?”

Misha hadn’t even realized his eyes were closed until he opened them and found Jensen’s green eyes, complete with lust-blown pupils, boring into him as though he wanted to eat Misha alive. “Clear.”

“Good. Get on your knees.” He was down as quickly as he could manage, eyes on Jensen’s fly because he was fairly certain he knew what’s coming next and, yeah. He absolutely wanted to suck Jensen’s dick. But Jensen surprised him, cupping the right side of Misha’s face with a warm, open palm and caressing gently at the temple with his thumb. “You are… amazing. Stunning. Not just like this. There are days on set when I have to fight to keep my hands off you. Sometimes I’m more successful than others.” He chuckled to himself, and the chuckle brought a small smile to Misha’s lips in turn. “I know how you think sometimes. I know your head twists things, turns them inside out, makes you think for some reason you don’t deserve what you have. But you do. You do, and I’m going to do my absolute damndest to convince you of that.” Misha tried to turn his head, to shy away from the affection in Jensen’s smile, but Jensen’s hand held him in place. 

“Jensen-- I--” He sounded absolutely wrecked and broken, even to his own ears.

“You’re a good man, Misha. You work hard. You’re probably the kindest man I’ve ever met. And you deserve it all.”   


“I  _ don’t-- _ ” 

“I’m gonna make it my personal mission to make you see that. But it starts here. Focus.” He wandered over to sit down on the edge of the bed. “I want your mind quiet, your eyes closed, and your focus only on my words… and my dick. Take it out, take into your mouth. Don’t suck.”

Cockwarming. This was cockwarming. Misha had never done it - mostly because when he’d fooled around with guys in the past, the main event was the  _ only  _ event - but he’d heard of it, and for Jensen? For Jensen he’d do anything.

That thought both delighted and terrified him as he followed Jensen’s directions to a T.

He lost track of time. He lost track of everything, really, except for Jensen’s dick in his mouth, and Jensen’s fingers running through his hair, and the quiet cadence of Jensen’s voice telling him how good and right and wonderful he was. He unraveled, and by the time Jensen coaxed him up onto the bed to undress him and open him up and fuck him so sweetly it made him cry, he’d forgotten all the reasons why he ever believed anything else. 


	4. The New Season

_ July 2009 _

The summer con circuit was full of long flights and longer days; of time spent in crowded spaces and hotel rooms where half the time Jensen couldn’t remember what city he was in. And when he was home - well, he was home, with Danneel, and he admittedly didn’t give a lot of thought to his workplace romance. He and Misha took what few stolen moments they could find in the UK and in Chicago and fooled around a bit, but it wasn’t nearly as often as when they were on set or with the intensity it had been in Sydney.

But the return to Vancouver that summer brought the return of something that now itched under Jensen’s skin every time he was in Misha’s vicinity. Desire thrummed through his body; the need to  _ have _ , to  _ claim _ , to  _ possess  _ coursed through his veins. 

Season 5 felt different from the get-go, because there wasn’t the constant threat of contract non-renewal looming over Misha’s head. He’d signed on for the length of the season, guaranteed 13 episodes. That meant he would be here and Jensen could have him and.

They should probably talk about things before he pulled out the hardware, he supposed.

Castiel’s role in the premiere was minimal - he was presumed to be dead, after all, as had been the intention when the finale was originally written. Which was fine, but it meant that Misha’s time on set was limited, which by association meant that Jensen’s ability to fool around with him was limited.

That  _ sucked _ .

On the third day of filming the second episode, when it had been a week since he’d seen Misha and two more days until the man would be back on set to film his scenes for this episode, Jensen called him with the explicit intention of having phone sex.

They did not have phone sex.

They did not have phone sex because Misha wasn’t at home, being lazy and bored like Jensen assumed he would be when he had time off. He was out.

“Out? Out where?”

“Outside,” Misha deadpanned, and Jensen rolled his eyes. “Amazing how far I roam when you let me off my leash, isn’t it?”

His face flushed because he knew, he  _ knew  _ Misha meant that exactly the way it sounded. Nevermind that Jensen didn’t do that sort of thing, like  _ ever _ , because-- “You’re gonna pay for that the next time I get my hands on you.”

Misha’s responding chuckle was almost lost in the background hubbub of voices and rush of traffic. “Oh?”

Jensen gave a glance around for prying eyes and listening ears, even though he was in his trailer. He locked his door as an afterthought and then growled. “I am not above taking you over my knee.”

“Ha!” Genuine, carefree laughter followed. The open air made it sound much further away than it was. He could picture Misha, walking down the street in LA, passing strangers who were none the wiser to what kind of conversation Misha was having, because so far he’d been very vague with his commentary. “I’d like to see you try.”

Oh.

_ Oh _ . That was a  _ challenge _ . Dammit. Now Jensen was horny and frustrated and Misha was intentionally drawing his Dom to the surface, and he was hard and he couldn’t-- wait. Yes he sure as fuck could. Just because Misha was out on the town didn’t mean Jensen couldn’t get the relief he wanted.

He got comfortable on his couch and opened the fly on Dean’s pants. “You know what I think?”

Misha was still laughing. Fuck him so very much. “What?”

“I think a far better punishment for you--” he gave himself a couple of long strokes and let out an overly filthy moan-- “is denial.”

The laughter stopped short. Jensen’s mouth slid into a self-satisfied smile. “Not so funny now, is it?” He continued working his cock, not holding back, allowing himself to settle into his natural rhythm and vocal pattern for when he masturbated. The initial moan had just been to get Misha’s attention. Now, Misha was hearing the real thing - his labored, shuddered breathing; the whimpers and sighs that escaped him with every stroke.

“Jensen…”

“Mmmm… Wish you were here, Mish, I really do. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” The background sounds had died out. Misha had ducked somewhere out of the fray.

Good.

“Where are you now?”

“Cab. On my way home.” It was a low growl, barely audible. Jensen let himself picture Misha, sitting in the back of a cab in downtown LA, biting his lip and gripping his phone tightly to his ear in an effort to keep control of himself until he was dropped off.

“Oh? Gonna get yourself off when you get there?”

“Vicki will be there.”

“Let ‘er watch. Or help. I want you to come while you think about me, Misha, think about me over here all hard and wanting of you, wishing I could bend you over, slap that beautiful ass, ‘n fuck you so slow and deep you scream for me, Misha, I swear…”

“Two more days.” He was panting. Jensen groaned. This wasn’t phone sex.

It was  _ better _ .

“Fuck--Misha--fuck--!” He spent over his hand, air rushing from his lungs.

When he came back to himself a moment later, he realized the call was disconnected. A text came through from Misha shortly thereafter, and Jensen smirked as he read it:  _ Vicki says the best way to follow through is for her to peg me. So thanks for that. _

He was marinating on a reply, fingers ghosting over his phone screen, when a loud pounding on the door and a call of, “Five minutes, Jensen!” from a PA outside got his attention.

It didn’t really warrant a verbal response, but it did mean he had to get moving. He quickly punched out a  _ tell her I want a picture of your ass slapped red _ before getting up to head to the bathroom to make himself presentable.

***

It was the next day - a very hot and sticky Thursday at the end of July, in the middle of filming a scene with Jared - that it hit Jensen out of nowhere exactly what he and Misha had done.

He physically fell over from the weight of it.

“Cut!” Bob came out from under the hood, and Jared came over, an arm out to brace Jensen and help him to his feet. “What the hell was that?”

“Jensen, you all right, dude?”

“I, uh. Yeah. I think I just need--” He shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t fine.

He’d cheated.

He and Danneel had an agreement about workplace fuckbuddies, and he’d reached out to Misha when Misha was decidedly not at work, initiated phone sex, gotten off, and then asked for pictures of Misha’s freshly spanked ass after his wife fucking pegged him. What the  _ actual fuck _ was wrong with him?

“Are you sure?” Bob’s overly bushy eyebrows were up expectantly - because the answer was supposed to be yes, and Jensen would finish this scene like he was supposed to, and then he’d go have his personal crisis when they weren’t wasting tape. 

He let out a rush of breath and put his hands on his hips. “No, you know what, I’m actually-- I need a minute. Can we break?”

“The scene’s set, Jensen, everyone’s blocked out, we just gotta get through--”

But he didn’t hear anything else, because he was already storming off the soundstage, a familiar rush in his ears drowning out Bob and everyone else who called after him.

He barely made it back to the kitchen sink in his trailer before he vomited.

When his stomach was empty, he continued to lean over the sink while he dry heaved and his stomach churned on itself, and when he was so exhausted he couldn’t stand anymore, he turned and slid to the ground, his back against the lower cabinets, and buried his face in his hands as he sobbed.

He had no idea how long he sat there, contemplating his horrible life decisions, and the fact that Danneel Harris, who hung the stars in his sky, whom he loved more than he’d ever loved anyone before in his life, was probably going to leave him when he told her. He’d fucked up, and now he was going to lose everything. Fuck.

He didn’t hear the trailer door open and close, but he turned his head to the side when he sensed someone sinking down next to him. Through blurry vision he could see Jared, his gargantuan body folded up like a child’s to mirror Jensen’s knees-to-chest posture. “You wanna tell me what happened in there?”

He choked on a sob and shook his head slightly before burying his face back between his knees. “I fucked up,” he spilled, and sobbed again. “I’m gonna lose her, Jared, I’m gonna-- I just-- God, why is this-- it wasn’t supposed to be--” But he wasn’t sure how he felt, and that weighed just as heavily as everything else. He drew in a deep breath and then moaned out woefully, “I had phone sex with Misha.”

Jared was silent for long enough that Jensen had to turn his head again to check and make sure the other man was still sitting there. He was. And he was grinning at Jensen. “I knew it,” he said, sounding entirely too self-satisfied as his grin split even wider. “I knew you guys were messing around. Ha! Gen owes me fifty bucks.”

A new emotion crept in amongst Jensen’s confusion, and he knit his brows together in mild disgust. “This is what you’re doing with your fiance? Placing bets on my side piece?”

“Among other things. Look, Jen, it’s no big deal, all right?”

“No big deal? No big  _ deal _ ?! Jared, we had phone sex yesterday.”

“OK--” Jared looked away for the first time, shaking his head as if to clear what Jensen had just said from his mind. “Too much information, first of all.”

“Hey man, you wanted to help.”

“Point. But. OK, so you guys… like, you… You know what, nevermind. That doesn’t matter. Look. Have you called Danneel?”

“No.”

“K. Uh. Why not?”

He really wasn’t sure what to make of Jared’s line of questioning at this point. “What do you mean  _ why not _ ? She’s gonna break up with me the second she hears, is why not, and that’s not something I’m ready for, even if I am an asshole.”

“OK, fine.” And, wow, that was way too easy. There was a pause where Jared studied him through a sidelong glance and then got to his feet as he pulled out his phone faster than Jensen could blink, and pushed a button. “ _ I’m _ calling her.”

“You. Asshole. Do  _ not-- _ ”

“Heyyyy Dee! Long time! Hey, I know! You should come out to set tomorrow. Yeah, no, I mean it. Misha’s gonna be here, and he--” Jared chuckled and Jensen was up, face burning with tension and anger as he attempted and failed to take Jared’s phone away. “So listen. Uh. About that Misha thing. Jensen’s got something he needs to talk to you about. What? Oh. Yeah, I know all about it, no worries. Here you go.”

_ I will murder you _ , he mouthed at Jared, who just shrugged and waved and saw himself out of the trailer. “Uh. Hey babe.” He could hear her moving about the house, maybe putting something away in the kitchen. “So, uh, listen. I. I’m real sorry, OK. I didn’t-- I don’t know what I was thinking. I  _ wasn’t  _ thinking. I’m. God, I am so sorry.”

The sound of her movement stopped, and all Jensen could hear was the stillness, like they were hanging in the moment, waiting for something to move them forward. “Jensen? Baby, what happened?”

He sucked his lungs full of air through pursed lips and spat out, “I had phone sex with Misha.” Silence. “He’s at home, and I-- I called him from my trailer, and I talked him right dirty while he was riding in a cab through LA, and I got off on it, and then when he texted me that Vicki was gonna peg him that night, I said she should, uh, that he should have her snap a picture of his paddled ass I am so. So. Sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you, I know this is outside our agreement, I know, and I’m. Sorry. And I love you.”

He stopped, mostly because he was out of words. The stillness carried on for a few more beats, and he longed to fill it, but he couldn’t. He had nothing more to say.

“Did he send you the picture?”

It caught him so off-guard that he had to blink several times to let his brain catch up. “I-- what?”

“Did. He send you. The picture? Of his ass? You did ask him for it, after all. Did he deliver?”

“Uh.” He flushed and his cock gave an interested twitch at the memory. “Yeah.”

“I wanna see.”

He fumbled with his phone, desperate to do whatever he needed to do in order to keep this wonderful woman in his life. He sent the photo, then waited with baited breath for her reply.

She started with a heavy sigh. “Look. Jensen.” A pause. It felt like an eternity. “OK, first of all, that’s a  _ really  _ great ass. Like. Damn.” A little giggle, and Jensen felt the first slivers of hope that she was going to let this ride. But then there was another long silence, and that hope started to fade. “This… isn’t like the others, is it? It’s not just a fling. It’s… more.”

“I’m so sorry, Dee.”

“I’m not.”

“I mean yeah, I guess it’s better you find out I’m a cheating bastard before we get hitched.”

“No-- Jesus, Jensen. Just. Stop. Fuck.” She heaved an exasperated sigh. “This…  _ thing  _ with Misha has been different from the jump. Don’t insult me by assuming I don’t know that. I get it. You don’t just like him. You  _ like  _ like him. You might even love him, hell, J, you might even love him in a way not unlike the way that you love me. That? Doesn’t upset me.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. What upsets me is the lack of communication about this whole thing and the fact that you’re tiptoeing around talking about it for fear of upsetting me. So you got off over the phone with Misha and then he sent you a lewd picture. So  _ what _ ? You were bored and horny away from home and you reached out to someone you trusted to help you with both of those things. I don’t care that that person wasn’t me. But the fact that it’s making you feel this way, I think, says more about you than it does about me.” He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. “What do you really want from Misha, Jensen? Be honest with me. Is this still just a casual fuck? Or do you want it to be something more?”

God, it hurt. His chest constricted with emotion and he let out a mournful whine. “If I-- If I say I’ve got feelings… are you… gonna leave?”

“Oh, Baby. Leave? No. Not over this. But you gotta keep me in the loop. Don’t hold back on the details, even if they scare you. Maybe  _ especially  _ if they scare you.”

“What I’m most afraid of is losing the best thing that ever happened to me just because I can’t get my heart and my dick on the same page.”

She huffed a laugh at that. “I think they’re more on the same page than you think. It’s your overactive brain that needs to get with the program. Maybe you ought to give it a short-circuit. Switch it up with Mish for once.”

“Are you saying…”

“I’m coming to see you tomorrow,” she announced definitively. “And we’re going to spend the weekend fucking this out.”


	5. The New Position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks - just a heads up that this is a longer chapter, covers a lot of ground, and contains a Jenmisheel threesome. I mean. Not that any of that is bad stuff necessarily, but. Just FYI :)

“This is unexpected.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Misha ducked behind a random tree between takes. He didn’t have a secure place to make this call, but it needed to be made, because Vicki needed to be aware that something was happening. Parts were moving. “But this couldn’t wait. Danneel Harris is on set today. She’s, um, here for the weekend and uh, I think she and Jensen plan to… invite me in.”

“Do you want to play with her? With them? Are you comfortable being their third?”

“I mean…” He sighed and threw up his left arm, the one that wasn’t holding the phone. “Yes? I think?”

“You think.” They’d been down this road before, on both ends, so the conversation wasn’t new. But it was rare that they didn’t play together, and even more rare that one of them stepped in as a third in a threesome without the other. And the fact that he’d already fooled around with Jensen, was undeniably starting to feel something more than just a fling between them, and now they were bringing in his fiance? That was a first.

“I mean, she’s hot. Nice. Smart, friendly. Did I mention hot?”

“Nice tits,” Vicki agreed, and he could picture her nodding along. “You like nice tits.”

“I don’t know what this is, Vick, and it scares me.”

There was a long pause, and then her voice came back, her tone deviated from its usual practical cadence. “Scares me a little bit too, Mish,” she admitted. “Are you in love with him?”

“I don’t think so, not yet.”

“Not yet,” she echoed, still sounding like her mind was much further away than usual. “But not no, either. You’re falling. He means something.”

“Nothing means more to me than you.” It was absolutely, positively essential that she knew that, no matter what happened or didn’t happen with Jensen.

“I know. And I trust you.” She sighed a little bit, sounding resigned, and then her practicality was back, speaking with the conviction of a woman who’d made up her mind. “You need to see this through. Let it settle into whatever it is, find its natural cadence. We’ll figure it out, wherever it lands.”

He couldn’t help but draw a deep breath and tap into her calm. She kept him grounded that way, even from hundreds of miles away. “We’ll probably get fucked up first.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t. I assume one of them has their hands on some decent stuff. Just watch yourself about it.”

“I know. I will.”

“I love you to the moon, Dmitri.”

“And all the way back.” His lips turned up into a smile just at the corners. “Goodnight.”

“Good luck.”

***

In the end, that weekend was magical. 

Jensen didn’t let Misha touch Danneel that first weekend, but he took a positively Dominant stance on the whole thing, so Misha was turned on anyway. In fact, they both took a pretty Dominant stance about the encounter, if Misha was perfectly honest. They worked well as a team, but he was clearly the unicorn in this situation.

He’d never been the unicorn.

It was really,  _ really  _ fucking awesome.

Almost as awesome as the weed Danneel had brought up with her.

He felt warm and floaty and giddy and good, and so when Danneel said, “I want to watch Jensen have his way with you,” he just giggled and nodded his consent.

And Jensen did.

Misha was settled comfortably on his back, his head in Danneel’s lap, knees pulled up and ankles on Jensen’s shoulders so Jensen could take him deep. 

Then she’d moved out from underneath him and taken his hands up above his head, holding them firmly by the wrist. “Has he ever bound you, Baby?” she asked, and Misha whined and shook his head. “Would you let him?”

“Yes, God yes.” Being at Jensen’s mercy even just with a bit of restraint or a verbal order to be still or not touch was so hot. The mental imagery inspired by the suggestion of bonds - leather or ropes, it didn’t matter - nearly had him at the edge.

Jensen noticed. Somehow, he knew, and he backed off, slowing his thrusts to a nearly imperceptible rhythm.

“ _ Please _ .” Misha barely recognized the broken plea as his own.

Jensen smiled, slow and easy, and kissed his wife in the frame of Misha’s vision. “Easy there, cowboy. Can’t have you going off too soon. We’ll get there, don’t worry.”

“You really are delicious.” Danneel was smiling down at him, and Misha smiled back dopily. “Next time I’m gonna find out just how much.”

Misha opened his mouth to respond, but Jensen shot them both a Look, and whatever he was going to say died on his tongue. Then he snapped his hips and slammed into Misha, filling him hard and fast and staying there for longer than necessary. He was making a point about who was in charge.

It was so fucking hot.

He said so.

Danneel and Jensen both chuckled, and Jensen rolled his hips while Danneel leaned down to kiss him on the mouth. It was chaste, no tongue, mostly just a press of lips, but it grounded him and he was grateful for the contact. “You’re adorable,” she praised. Then paused, and tilted her head to study him. “And yet somehow also incredibly hot. How are you… this? Jensen, how is he so…”

“Sexy?”

“Yes, that.”

“Wish I knew, Dee. Wish I knew.” He picked up his pace, rocking into MIsha with more urgency. “OK, Mish. You ready?”

“Fuck yes, fuck yes.”

He wrapped a hand around Misha’s dick and stroked firmly in time with his own thrusts. “Eyes on me, Darlin’.” He gave a few more thrusts, then frowned, shifted, and came at a different angle. “Am I hittin’ it at all, Mish?”

“Nuh--- don’t-- it’s---” But Jensen shook his head and shifted again, going deeper this time, and stars exploded behind Misha’s eyelids, which was the only way he knew his eyes had slid closed.

“I said eyes on me.” There wasn’t room for argument in Jensen’s tone, and Misha’s eyes snapped open. “Wanna see you lose it for me when I say. When  _ I say _ .” It was punctuated with a hard thrust right to Misha’s prostate, and he bucked up and whined, and that’s when he felt Danneel’s hands on his head, tilting it back to keep his eyes on Jensen. It was too much. It wasn’t enough. It was an intensity he hadn’t felt with a sexual partner other than his wife in years, and it made sparks dance inside his body, needling at him, raising the high, until the only thing he knew was the pleasure of Jensen moving inside him, the weight of his gaze, and his voice, coaxing him _ just a little longer, Misha, just a little longer, you can do it, hold on for me, you’re so good _ … and then a stutter of his hips, a moan, and the command. “Let go, Misha. Come for me. For  _ me _ .”

Later, he’d cry, heavy with regret that this was the best orgasm of his life, and Vicki wasn’t there for it. It wasn’t one crashing wave, but a steady roll of them, through his body and across his mind, and still he kept his eyes on Jensen because that’s what he was supposed to do and wherever his mind was, he wasn’t in a position to do anything else.

Jensen folded around him, after, spooning him from behind. Danneel brought them a wet washcloth and Jensen wiped them both down and tossed the rag on the floor before rolling back into the cuddle. He pulled a fleece blanket up around them and babbled half-sensical words of praise into Misha’s neck. He pressed gentle kisses to Misha’s shoulder. 

In that cocoon of warmth and love and safety, Misha’s mind was blank, and he drifted off to sleep.

***

They had to talk about it. Jensen knew they had to talk about it. He really wanted  _ all four _ of them to talk about it, have Danneel and Vicki there, have everyone on the same page. He told Misha that.

Misha blinked at him. “Why?”

And it just so completely threw him off his game that he had to stare at Misha for a solid 30 seconds just to figure out if he was fucking with him. “What do you mean ‘why’? You’re married, we’re engaging in some pretty adult activities, my fiance’s been involved, don’t you think we should all just…”

“I don’t know, Jensen. I don’t know what to do about any of this. This?” He waved a hand in the empty space between the two of them on Jensen’s couch in his trailer. “In theory, this is something we’ve both been doing for awhile, right? Being non-manogamous isn’t new territory. So what gives?”

“A--Are you-- do you really have no idea?”

Misha shrugged and fixed Jensen with a hard stare, and Jensen genuinely couldn’t decide if Misha really had no idea, or if he just wanted Jensen to explicitly state his reasons and intentions. Probably the latter, he decided, because Misha Collins was no fool.

“Misha.” He glanced down at his lap, gathering his courage before he continued. In that moment, a bit of anxiety tugged at him; he’d never had a long-term sub before, except on the rare occasion that Danneel agreed to play the part. What’s more, he’d never built the relationship beforehand. He’d never gone into a power exchange with something so big to lose. He took a deep breath and then looked up again, because he owed Misha the confidence and eye contact while he said what was about to come out of his face. “Maybe you didn’t get this out of our last, um. Encounter? But Dee and me, we, uh. We’re kinky.”

“OK, well. Pot, kettle.”

Jensen shook his head. There was the smallest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of Misha’s mouth, an indication that he knew exactly where this was going and was just being a complete shit, forcing Jensen to say literally all of the words.

But then again, he supposed, they were words that needed to be said. Maybe that was Misha’s play here.

Fuck it.

“I’m a Dominant,” he punched out. “Dee switches, especially with men. She subs for me, when it’s just the two of us, but we, uh.” He faltered, hesitant as to whether he should impart this last bit. But, again, fuck it. He was already in. “We have parties. Play parties, you know, where people… play. Do you know what that is, or do I need to explain it?”

“I know what it is.”

“OK. So yeah. Anyway. We host them sometimes. Very closed-circle, invite-only kind of thing, but. Listen, maybe I read you wrong, but I got the impression you had a bit of submissive in you, and if you’re willing, it’s something I’d like to explore with you when we do. You know. What we do.”

“You want to do power exchange with me?”

“Yes. I do. And if you don’t, that’s fine. I’ve been pushing a little bit, and that’s-- I thought I should probably explain myself before I pushed much further, and if you’re not interested, I’ll knock it off. Scout’s honor.”

“And if I am? Interested, that is.”

“Then I’d really like to talk about establishing some limits and doing some very, very dirty things with you.”

Misha stared at him for a long time. He stared for so long that Jensen was starting to think he wasn’t going to offer a verbal response at all. But then he finally nodded, licked his lips, and opened his mouth. “I’ve done it before,” he said. “Once, with a woman. Vicki was interested to see how it would play out, so I went along.”

“And?”

“And…” He cleared his throat and scooted an inch closer to Jensen on the couch, but maintained eye contact as he spoke. “When it was over, I told Vicki I wouldn’t be comfortable doing it again with a casual partner. I couldn’t, um…” He bit his lip, churning on the right words. “I couldn’t summon up the level of trust needed for it to be an enjoyable experience.”

“But me… You know me.”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I do.” He drew a breath, and his next words came out quieter. “Maybe too much.”

Jensen tutted in response before leaning in to press a gentle kiss against Misha’s lips. “How about we just try?” He murmured softly in the space between their faces, and then another kiss. “We’ll start slow…” And another, still just warm lips to warm lips. “Build it up.” Another kiss, with the slightest slip of the tip of his tongue. “And I’ll take such good care of you.”

“Okay.” Misha gave himself over to the kiss, then, and Jensen relished the feel of his lover melting into his arms, a first sign of a willing surrender. “Okay.”

***

Subbing for Jensen was weird. And that wasn’t because Jensen was bad at it - on the contrary, Jensen was amazing in the role of a Dominant. Misha never would’ve guessed he had this potential. Which. Maybe it was weird  _ because  _ he was so awesome at it.

“He’s just… it’s not even like he’s playing it as a part,” Misha tried to explain to Vicki one foggy November afternoon. He was at home, finally, after four days of shooting in Vancouver. “It’s just him being, I don’t know,  _ natural _ . He’s good at it. Like he’s good at everything. I hate him.”

She laughed aloud at that. “You don’t hate him. You love him.” He just nodded and tight-lipped-smiled at her, and she raised her eyebrows. “I mean it, Mish. You love him. Even if you don’t see it.”

His smile faded, and he ducked his chin to his chest as warmth crept into his cheeks. “I don’t know how it happened,” he admitted.

“We seldom do,” she replied, in the same quiet tone that he’d last spoken. In the silence that followed, he looked up. She was seated next to him on their couch, head turned to look out the large living room window. He remembered installing that window. It had been an absolute bitch, and he’d cracked the first one and had to wait three days for a replacement to be delivered. But the view was amazing and the hard work to capitalize on it was worth it in the end.

“It’s like some kind of goddamn metaphor,” he mumbled.

“What is?”

“The window.” With a sigh, he leaned into her, pressing his ear to her chest so he could hear her heartbeat. “Nevermind.”

“Don’t you feed me that ‘nevermind’ bullshit, Dmitri,” she replied, somehow firm and lacking fire all at the same time. Her fingers started stroking through his hair, and he marveled at how her fingertips felt so different from Jensen’s when they did this same thing, and yet were just as comforting. “Either we’re working through this, or you’re staying out here on the couch all night with your demons.”

“It’s just  _ so much _ .” He supposed he hadn’t really expected for her to just let it be. Building walls between each other wasn’t how they did things, not now, not ever. “It was just for fun, until it wasn’t. It was just sex, until it wasn’t. Then it was just a power play experiment, and now it’s not, and I can’t stop it and I don’t want to and I’m terrified of where this is going and I just. I don’t know. What to  _ do _ .” He was crying now, but that was OK. He’d gotten it all out, and his chest already felt less tight.

She held him silently for a long time, and he just stayed like that, because no matter what the world threw at him, Vicki had always been his safe place. Her heartbeat stayed constant and he let that calm him, until the tears stopped, and then she spoke.

“Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky we are.” Her words jolted him so much that he jerked upright to stare at her, brow creased in confusion. “We have so much goddamn love in our lives that it’s overflowing to a point that we don’t know what to do with it, and it makes our hearts ache.” She pulled him into a hug and kissed the crown of his head. “I don’t love him the same way that you do,” she admitted. “Maybe I could. Maybe I’ll grow into it. But what I feel right now is… compersion. I feel love and joy because  _ you  _ feel love and joy. And I don’t begrudge you it at all.”

Later, he wouldn’t remember leaving the couch with her and going to bed, because he digested her words and then fell against her and sobbed until well past the point of exhaustion. By the morning light, though, he rolled over and pulled her close, and held her until she woke, a full two hours later.


	6. The New Pecking Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. This is... this is just smut. That's all this is :D

“Shhhh.” Jensen hushed before he leaned down to press a kiss to Misha’s lips.

Misha whimpered and arched his back, and Jensen chuckled as he ran a flat palm over the skin, feeling each notch of his spine in turn. When he reached the tailbone, he tapped his fingers there, and then landed a firm spank on the right ass cheek. He laid down a matching one on the left before shifting to stand behind Misha, who held his position beautifully, ass up, braced on his knees and forearms. “You know, when you arch up like that, you look like a cat. Majestic. Beautiful. The way your body moves… Baby, I get drunk on you.” He brought his hand down again, three times in quick succession - left, right, right - and then a pause, before a fourth one, on the left for balance. Then he bent a bit to admire his work. The color was uniform across Misha’s skin - good. Not too much in any one place. He reached out and ran the nail of his left pointer finger just barely over the reddened skin, and Misha hissed and hollered out. Perfect.  _ He  _ was perfect. 

He planted a kiss where his finger had been, then stood to full height again. “You’re so good for me, you know. So good. So smart and kind and wonderful and gorgeous. How’d I ever get so lucky?” He took a deep breath to clear his mind. “I’d really like to fuck you right now, Mish. You ready for that plug to come out? Want me inside you?” He circled to Misha’s front again and bent to meet his eyes. He knew Misha was gone flying in sub space - but the look on his face as he flew there was exquisite, better than he’d ever dreamed it could be. But he had to pull him back a little, right now. “Gotta say the words, Baby,” he intoned, keeping his voice low but firm, and holding Misha’s chin to maintain eye contact during the exchange.

“ _ Please _ .” And  _ oh _ , that broken plea. Jensen had heard it from play partners before, but it was transcendent coming from Misha, pulling so hard at his heart that he had to fight to bite back a whimper. He  _ wanted _ . He  _ needed _ . “Please what, hmmm?”

“Please, I-- I need-- please fuck me, please, please…”

“So good for me.” He allowed himself an indulgent kiss, something he normally reserved for outside of scening, but everything was different with Misha, everything was new and precious and this moment was… he shook his head to clear it. Now wasn’t the time. He had responsibilities.

He moved behind Misha again and twisted and gently pulled on the wide plug he’d put there a few hours ago, when they’d both first arrived on set. It had been interesting, watching Misha try not to squirm around the intrusion while he filmed, but Misha had managed it remarkably well. That was something else Jensen was bringing to this scene that he’d never felt so strongly with a sub before: Pride. He was motherfucking  _ proud  _ of this man on levels he couldn’t begin to explain.

He grabbed the nearby bottle of lube and fingered Misha a bit, just to be sure he was ready. Then he removed the layers of Dean Winchester’s clothing until he was stark nude, then lubed up his cock and lined up for entry.

It was a slow, glorious slide. He knew how it would feel by now, even in his Top Space; he’d let himself go to that mental place a time or two with Misha already, even if Misha hadn’t been entirely aware of what was happening. But this was different, the awareness of his sub, the feel of his love, the ache in his soul for  _ more _ , and he just couldn’t get enough and never wanted this moment to end.

He let it all pour out in his rhythm, tried to ride it as long as he could, before he had to reach down and stroke Misha along with his thrusts so that they’d both see this through to a good ending.

He came harder than he ever had with anyone other than his wife, as though his orgasm ripped straight from his soul rather than his overstimulated nerves. Misha followed a beat later. 

It was only when Jensen grabbed his prepared towel for cleanup and joined Misha on the bed to begin aftercare that he noticed the other man was sobbing quietly. 

He reached out a gentle hand, afraid to touch, but more afraid to hold back affection. “Misha?”

The response was an unexpected kiss, deep, searching, exploratory, until they were out of breath.

Jensen let Misha drink from him, and the towel fell to the floor, forgotten.


	7. The Old Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Advance warning for questionable BDSM etiquette between the boys. Nothing horrible, but Jensen questions his own headspace and goes ahead with a scene anyway, which is... yeah. Questionable.
> 
> Also, there be angst here, mateys.

_ March 2011 _

Years later, both Jensen and Misha - and Vicki and Danneel, to an extent - would look back on the next 18 months as a kinky honeymoon of sorts. They had a lot of really excellent kinky sex. Jensen was a gentle Dominant who cared about Misha’s mind first of all, and he somehow always seemed to know what to do to quiet Misha’s inner demons and bring him back to center before  _ what if _ ate him alive. 

The show was supposed to end, and just as they were poised to talk about what that meant for their relationship, it didn’t end and so they didn’t have to.

And maybe that’s where things started to go wrong, because really, Misha reflected, the bad seeds are planted long before the plants actually start to grow and to bloom. In the case of his relationship with Jensen, he supposed, the seeds were planted and nurtured by a lack of communication. They just  _ went along _ , because nothing forced them to look at their feelings or at each other… until it did.

The catalyst was what it was maybe always destined to be. It was what they’d agreed upon at the start, after all: For the length of Misha’s contract.

And now that day had come. The contract was up, and the magic of whatever this might have been if they’d actually nurtured it instead of just  _ going along _ was zapped from existence.

_ “I’m sorry, Misha, but you know how this business works. We’ve decided to go a different way with the show, pull it more back to centering on Eric’s original vision: Two brothers. Believe me when I say, it’s been an absolute joy having you, and we’d like to leave the door open for guest appearances down the road, but for now… your regular contract will expire, and the network has no plans to renew it.” _

Sera was succinct and professional in the meeting, as he supposed one ought to be with employees who were being laid off through no fault of their own. Misha nodded, accepting - because what else was there to do, really? - and then asked about the end, how Castiel’s storyline would be tied up, and whether or not he had any say in the resolution of this character he’d come to love.

She shared with him the early ideas being circulated about the end of Season 6 and the first part of Season 7 - a bit of mega-powered Castiel in an Icarus-inspired storyline, reaching too far, and ultimately getting burned up by his own over-pursuit of greatness. 

It would work, he supposed. Not how he’d have done it, putting Cas out to pasture after a severe dose of betrayal and getting drunk on power, but… it wasn’t his show to run.

He had every intention of telling Jensen right away, but before he could, he was intercepted by Mark Sheppard. Whatever happened to either of them from here on out, he’d always consider Mark a friend and working with him to be an absolute honor. Hell, maybe he could learn something from Mark right now - become like him, in that everyone recognized him as that guy who’d been in everything a little bit, but no one thing too overmuch.

“Got your walking papers, hey Misha?” He just nodded, not quite ready to look anyone in the eyes and talk about it, no matter how much he respected them. “I figured. Been there enough times myself to recognize the look of someone who’s been told their services are no longer needed.” He sighed, and they stopped walking across the lot, instead leaning up against the outside of one of the stages. “Ah well. Chin up, forward march, et cetera, et cetera. You’ve made an impression. Something else will present itself before too long.”

He heaved a sigh and cast his eyes up to the sky - overcast, and a slight wind that said either rain or snow was probably on its way. “I suppose. It just wasn’t how I pictured my early days of fatherhood - out of work, playing Mr. Mom.”

“You’ll be OK.” On this delivery, Mark was more definite than he had been in his earlier monologue. And they would be, he supposed. They had savings; they didn’t live beyond their means; he wasn’t above taking a job in another field if Hollywood decided they’d had enough of him. Just, well… leaving. It was the leaving that was hard. 

“I think so,” was the best he could manage.

“You’re thinking of our dear Mr. Ackles right now, aren’t you?”

“How’d you know?”

“Oh, come off it and don’t play me for a fool. Of course I know.  _ Everyone  _ knows. Granted I don’t know  _ what  _ you’re doing - and nor do I want to, no thank you very much - but you’re doing  _ something _ . The way you two look at each other is about as platonic as if you’d shown up with a dozen roses and handed them to each other every time you went in front of the cameras. So. Whatever you have going on between you, well… I suggest you figure out whether or not it’s worth keeping once you end up… wherever you’ll end up.”

Maybe if he’d had time to digest those words, mull them over, separate the truth from the suppositions and the feelings from the logic before he saw Jensen again, things might have worked out OK. Maybe not - it’s possible that stewing for hours or days would’ve only made it worse. But as it happened, he didn’t have hours or days. He had just a few seconds after Mark’s last words left his lips before Jensen appeared over Mark’s shoulder. He greeted them with a smile and a, “Sorry to interrupt this meeting of the minds.” Mark raised his eyebrows at Misha and left without another word, and then it was just him and Jensen, leaning against a wall, with a mess of unsaid words between them. He didn’t know which ones to pick up.

“I’m being cut loose.”

Maybe those were the wrong ones, because everything sort of went downhill from there.

***

Jensen didn’t want any of this. He didn’t want Misha to leave. He didn’t want the show to go a “different direction.” He didn’t want to lose… to lose…  _ whatever this was _ . 

He was following Misha to his trailer - he was due on set in like five minutes, but fuck that for the moment, anyway - but he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the lot as he realized he had  _ no idea _ what this was. He knew what it had started out as. He knew it had evolved. But he had no idea what it had become. He wondered if Misha felt the same way.

“Mish-- listen, Mish, wait up. Just. What--?” They were at Misha’s trailer door now, and Misha opened it, nodding with his head that Jensen should enter, and then following him up the metal steps and into the kitchen. “OK. Let’s just. Stop.”

“I mean, I figured we would, right? Once I’m gone… that was the deal.”

“Shut up.” He surged forward and pressed his lips to Misha’s, knowing he’d caught the other man off-guard and that he was kissing him breathless, but unable to stop. It was a hard kiss, all lips and teeth and no tongue, and when he pulled back with a pop, those blue eyes were wide and staring at him like the proverbial deer in the headlights. “Look Iiii-- Mish--” He sighed and let a breath of a helpless whimper escape. Then he dropped his arms in defeat and took a sudden interest in studying the floor. “What can I do right now to bring you out of your spiral?”

“You know the answer to that, but you’ve got a call time, Mr. Big Shot.” It was a low blow. Jensen hissed a breath in through his teeth and tried to swallow back a rebuke. 

He bit his lip hard enough that it hurt, hard enough to make himself flinch, and when he tasted blood he spat out, “Open your pants, pull them down to your knees. Boxers, too. Get on your hands and knees on the couch.”

Misha looked offended by the abrupt command - rightfully so, Jensen figured, and he thought maybe the other man would call red on the scene before it began. But he didn’t, and after a few beats his eyes went to the linoleum floor and Jensen got compliance without having to say anything further.

“Good. You’re right, I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m gonna give you 10 with my hand. No muss, no fuss, and when it’s done, you’re going to apologize for that slip of the tongue, cut the crap, ask for what you need, and we’re going to move on from whatever this is.” He paused to lick his lips and the added. “I need your consent, Misha.”

“You have it.” A beat, and Misha added, “Sir,” and Jensen chose not to balk at how it sounded more sarcastic than he would’ve liked.

He laid out the promised punishment without his usual flourish; he couldn’t quite place why, but his heart wasn’t in it. It felt just this side of wrong, and his mind screamed at him around stroke number six to stop, _for the love of God,_ _you’re not in the right head space, this isn’t good for either of you, it won’t solve anything_ , but he followed through anyway. 

Only when he was finished did he realize that Misha hadn’t made a sound.

“Misha?”

“I’m sorry.” It was muffled against his arms, because Misha still hadn’t lifted his head - or moved at all, really. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It just came out.”

“Thank you. What do you need from me?”

Something terrible pricked at the back of Jensen’s neck in the silence that followed, but he fought to stay calm, for Misha’s sake. And then Misha spoke.

“Time,” he said, so quietly Jensen almost didn’t hear. He still hadn’t moved from his position, braced on his hands and knees, facing away from Jensen. “I need you to give me time.”

“I don’t… I don’t know what…”

There were at least two ways to interpret that, and before Jensen could move to act or to ask for clarification, someone knocked loudly on his trailer door. “Five minutes ago, dude. Put your pants back on and let’s go.”

Jared. Probably a voluntary search-and-rescue, because Jared probably had at least a little bit of an idea of where Jensen was and who he was with. “Yeah, OK,” he called back. “Out in a sec.”

“I’m going to pound on the door every thirty seconds until you show your face.”

Jensen closed his eyes against the tidal wave of emotions that threatened to consume him in that moment: Worry, anger, frustration, grief for a loss he felt coming. He pushed it all away. “Fine! I’m coming!”

Misha still hadn’t moved.

“Misha--”

“Go.”

So he went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm... sorry???


	8. The Old Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaangst and drinking as a coping mechanism. And sad Misha. I continue to be sorry.
> 
> Sort of.

All things considered, Misha did feel pretty bad about kicking Jensen out of his own trailer. And he did feel pretty bad about his attitude. And he did feel pretty bad about… pretty much everything.

After Jensen left, Misha curled up on the bed and called Vicki, because it’s what he always did when he felt this heavy. 

“You love him.” Sometimes he thought she sounded like a broken record about that, even if she was exactly right. “You love him, and you’ve been ignoring that love, pretending this is just some sort of fling between you two when, at least from one side, it’s anything but.”

“Vicki, I--”

“No, Dmitri, that’s  _ enough _ . I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore. It’s not healthy, and it’s not fair to Jensen, either. So. I’m pulling rank.”

“ _ Please _ , don’--”

“Either you tell him how you feel, or you end this thing between the two of you. Cut it off. Clean break. You’re leaving the show anyway, right?”

“Yeah, but--”

“But nothing. This is tension that you have the power to resolve. So resolve it. Or don’t, but then accept that it’s over and leave it in the past. You owe me that much.”

He was crying, and he knew she knew he was crying even though he was doing his absolute best not to make a sound. Might as well speak and remove all doubt. “I’m scared, Vick.”

“Of what?”

“That he’ll-- that I’ll lose--”

“Him?”

“Everything.” There wasn’t even a beat of hesitation; she was right. He owed her the truth. He owed it to himself, too, and to Jensen.

But he was so goddamn scared.

“You love him.”

Again with the broken record, but Jesus Christ… “I love him.”

“Then you have to tell him.”

When he hung up the phone, the knots in his stomach, the feeling of being weighed down by emotion, was still there. Vicki had said he had the power to lift it, but he wasn’t sure she was right.

He didn’t have the same faith in himself that she did. And he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to lift the weight.

***

After parting with Misha, and after a terrible evening of filming where he missed more marks than he cared to admit and spent all of his down time hiding out either in craft services or drinking in Jared’s trailer, Jensen really wasn’t sure what to expect when he returned to his own trailer at the end of the night.

It sure as heck wasn’t Misha, asleep on his bed.

He observed him from a distance for a solid 5 minutes without doing anything, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of Misha’s back with each breath. He was face down, ass-up, and Jensen had to admit that it wasn’t a bad view.

At long last, he sighed and approached the bed. He sat down on the side Misha wasn’t occupying and kicked off his shoes before stretching out, being sure to leave enough space between them in case Misha still needed “time.”

“Mish,” he murmured, and took hold of Misha’s shoulder to shake it as gently as he could. “Mish, come on. Time to go home.” A low groan of displeasure was the only response, so Jensen gripped a bit tighter to that shoulder. “Misha.” A pause. No answer. He rolled his eyes. “Dmitri.  _ Wake up _ .”

And. Woah. OK, so make that a  _ passed out _ Misha on his bed. Passed out  _ drunk _ . “What’s-- hap-- oh hi.”

“Oh hi?” He arched an eyebrow in equal parts bemusement and frustration. “You spend the evening getting plastered in my trailer, pass out on my bed, and that’s all you’ve got to say is ‘oh hi’?”

“Mmmsorryyyyyy.” Misha sighed and tried to sit up. He didn’t get very far. “Was waiting for you. I gotta…”

“Gotta what, Mish?”

“Gooootta puke.” He bolted off the bed and made a beeline for the attached three-quarter bath, and Jensen cringed as he listened to Misha lose the contents of his stomach. He was gone a long time after that - probably another five minutes - and Jensen was just starting to think he should go see if he was OK when Misha’s voice came from behind him, more gravelly but also more clear in speech. “I am genuinely sorry.”

“Wanna tell me what all this is about?”

Misha swayed around back to the bed, still clearly intoxicated, but far less green than he’d been before. “No.”

“O...kay…”

“But I have to. Vicki said she’d--” he shook his head and waved a hand in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter. I should anyway. I owe you that much before I… before I go.” Misha stopped. He chewed on his bottom lip, and Jensen watched, transfixed. God, he wanted to bite that goddamn lip himself so much. “I think I love you, Jensen. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I… somewhere along the line in all this I… I fell for you and now… now it’s over, and I just don’t know what to do.”

The entire confession was a mess, and Jensen couldn’t help feeling a bit like a deer caught in some blinding headlights. He instinctively grabbed onto the last thing first. “What’s over? No, wait. That’s wrong I. God, I… Misha, this is so much, I just…”

“Can we not talk about it?”

“I mean, if you want? Sure? Right now, anyway, I mean you’re…” He sighed and grabbed at his own hair in frustration. Nothing was coming out right. “Let me take you home.”

“ _ Your _ home?”

“Yes. But nothing… look, man. I gotta… I just want to make sure you’re OK until morning, OK? And then we’ll-- we’ll try to sort this all out.”

There was a conciliary nod, and Jensen took that as an OK to help Misha to his feet and out of the trailer. He made sure the lights were off and led them both over to Cliff’s waiting vehicle. “Misha’s coming with me.” He ignored Misha’s childish giggle at his choice of wording, and Cliff gave a wordless nod and helped Jensen get Misha into the truck.

“Jensen?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry I got drunk.”

“I know.”

“And that I threw up.”

“I know, Mish.”

“But I’m not sorry about the other thing.”

He pursed his lips and turned to look out the window at the sleepy Vancouver landscape. “I know that, too.”

It was going to be a long night.


	9. The Old Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're still in the thick of the angst, folks. This is headed into the period of The Breakup Theory, for those who subscribe to it (I obviously do.) So it's gonna be a rocky road for a while. Sorry (again.)

He wasn’t hung over, so that was a plus.

But he sure was confused about his current situation.

Before Misha even opened his eyes to greet the new day, it registered that he wasn’t in his bed. He was on a couch. His back and neck were screaming in discomfort, and he groaned at that, and stretched.

Then he remembered where he was, and why, and exactly what had happened yesterday, and he groaned again, this time at his own stupidity.

Fuck.

He didn’t want to sit up. He wanted to be swallowed up by Jensen’s couch. He wanted to hide away forever.

In his life, he’d done a lot of stupid things. He’d been perilous with his own physical safety on a multitude of occasions. He’d experimented with drugs. More than once, he’d had unprotected sex with a partner he didn’t know well enough to have full confidence in their claim to a clean bill of sexual health.

But he was going to go ahead and put this at the very top of his “Stupid Shit I’ve Done” list.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he mumbled into his palms as he covered his face as completely as he could, as though hiding his face from the world meant the world couldn’t see him, either. “So fucking stupid, Misha.”

“Good morning.”

So he wasn’t invisible or dead, then. Fuck. “Is it?”

“You tell me.”

Misha kept his face covered, but he pulled up his knees and a moment later he felt the foot-end of the couch dip under Jensen’s weight as the other man sat down. “You put me on the couch. That’s pretty much an answer, isn’t it?”

“I put you on the couch because when you’ve been drinking you snore like a dump truck.” A pause. Misha dared to peek out from between the fingers of his right hand, and he found Jensen pinning him with a Look. “And also because I wasn’t quite sure where we stood, and I didn’t want to overstep.” He popped the “p” to end his statement, and Misha buried his face back in his hands entirely, trying and failing to shut out the world.

“‘M so sorry.”

There was no response for a very long time. After awhile, Misha had to peek out from behind his hands again just out of pure curiosity, and obviously that’s what Jensen was waiting for, because when he had eye contact - even if it was only one eye - he spoke as though he’d had the words at the ready the whole time. “The most messed up part about this is that I have no idea what for.”

“I told you…”

“ _ I’m _ sorry.” And Misha was so thrown off that he sat up fully and put his hands down so he could stare at Jensen with the full force of his disbelief. “I shouldn’t have scened with you when we were both in the wrong state of mind for it to do any good.”

What happened next would haunt them for a very long time. Misha would look back with nothing but regret and self-loathing. In conversations years later, Jensen would admit to confusion and anger, and to letting Misha’s words that morning influence some later actions he wasn’t proud of.

But it was what it was: A bad poker hand that had been held for too long and now had no choice but to play out. 

“You think I didn’t have a say?” 

He registered Jensen raising an appeasing hand in an attempt to stem the tide that was coming. “No, Misha, I didn’t--”

He sat up, then stood up, the blood in his veins boiling too quickly to be cooled now. “I’m not some-- some wilting flower, Jensen. I’m not weak and I’m not helpless and if I had wanted to say no I sure as hell would’ve said no.”

“I know that. Come on, Misha, I’m trying…”

He knew he was crying - rage crying, sad crying, crying over something that had gotten so tangled that he had no idea how to unravel it except to tantrum like a child. “No.  _ No _ . I gave you my trust and my submission because I thought you understood-- and then I-- I gave you-- goddammit, Jensen, I fell in love. Me! That’s on  _ me _ ! Give me that at least, fucking hell, let me own that, I’m…”

He heard it. It registered, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, way back past the anger and the emotion. He heard Jensen say, “I love you too.” But it was like he heard it from across an ocean - too far away to reach. It should have quieted the storm.

It didn’t. It couldn’t.

Instead Misha just felt helpless, drowning in sorrow and anger and a few emotions he had no names for. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that now?”

“I-- I don’t-- we can figure this out, Misha, we can talk about it, I just… please.”

And so he made a decision. No-- that wasn’t quite right.  _ They  _ made a decision, because it might have been MIsha’s idea, but Jensen consented, and whatever their individual reasons, the culmination of it all was a mutual agreement. In a low voice, and without making eye contact, he said, “We can’t be in love, Jensen. We can’t-- our world, our lives, they’re not built for… we can’t be in a relationship. It’s not possible, and we’ve-- I’ve been foolish to entertain the idea for as long as I have.”

“Misha…”

“If we’re going to have sex, fine. But that’s what it is. It’s sex. It’s what we agreed on at the start: We fuck in our trailers and at conventions. We don’t  _ make love _ and we don’t cross boundaries and we don’t draw hearts around each other’s names and dream about what else might come of this, because nothing else is going to come of this. It’s just sex. And when it’s over, when I’m done… then we just walk away, and nobody gets hurt.”

But that was already a lie, because the pain in Misha’s chest as he laid out the ultimatum was so intense, he had no idea how he managed to hold the tears at bay all the way home.


	10. The Old Way (that never was)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The angst continues.
> 
> There's reference at the end of this chapter to a picture Misha posted on his Twitter and then later deleted. We're following the Cockles Breakup Theory pretty closely now, so if you're unfamiliar, I'm going to direct you [here](https://jensenacklesmishacollins.tumblr.com/post/82143546173/i-was-directed-here-to-ask-about-the-cockles) for background information. The very first picture in this post is the one being referred to late in this chapter.

_ Summer 2011 _

Sometimes in life, the only way to go forward is to go back first. The problem with that strategy in this case was that it didn’t take Jensen long to figure out that there was no going back to the old way because there was no old way to go back to.

He couldn’t go back to just having sex with Misha because it had never been _ just sex _ . Not even in the very beginning. He had always loved Misha, somehow.

So there wasn’t any going back; there was only going forward, and in this case “forward” meant a slow, steady death march to the end of Misha’s time on Supernatural.

“Forward” meant a tense season wrap party that ended with a hard fuck, all jagged edges and bitten lips and scrapes of teeth. “Forward” meant a growing ache in Jensen’s soul when Misha pushed away his efforts to care for him afterward. “Forward” meant forced professionalism and a constant feeling of fighting back tears.

“Forward” also kept Jensen busy, though, and not always with Misha. It meant summer vacation and everything that came with that - conventions in Europe and then the US and then back to Europe, and time with his wife in between. She tried to ask about Misha; he brushed her off, and she didn’t push.

“Forward” meant a play party at their place, which Jensen put together because he needed to scratch an itch. A tiny voice of reason in his brain told him that what he was trying to do was Dom the hell out of someone as a way of working out his feelings about Misha, but he ignored that because acknowledging it would mean he was acknowledging being both irresponsible and, more importantly, having feelings for Misha.

Misha didn’t want feelings. Misha didn’t want to be in love.

Misha wanted a fuck buddy, and Jensen could give him that.

“Forward” meant that in Italy, Misha faked an orgasm on stage, and it sounded so real that Jensen’s brain came to a screeching halt because  _ how dare _ Misha share something that personal with the entire world. Except. Oh, right. It was fake, and Jensen wasn’t in charge of that.

But he fucked Misha into the mattress for it later, because that… that he could do.

“Forward” meant getting the scripts for the first two episodes of Season 7 and having the cold, hard rock settle into his gut that confirmed that Misha was leaving the show, and soon.

“You’ll see him at conventions,” Danneel told him in an attempt to soothe his worries, but he just shook his head.

“Not the same.”

They filmed Cas’ death scene on location on a grey, mucky day in late July. Misha was sick as a dog. Food poisoning, the doctor said, and after rest and IV fluids in his trailer, he still looked like shit warmed over.

Jensen sat by his bedside, and Misha was too exhausted to tell him to go away. Or maybe he didn’t want to. Either way, he didn’t say it, so Jensen stayed. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me know if you gotta ralph, OK? There’s a bucket right here.”

He sighed. “This is how I go out, huh? My character melts away, maybe I’m just goin’ with ‘im.”

“Hey, now. Don’t say that.”

Misha rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. They fell into a silence that was almost companionable, if not for the cloud of  _ this is it, huh? _ hanging over it. Jensen reached slowly for Misha’s hand, and there was no attempt from the other man to pull it back. In fact, as Jensen’s palm slid over Misha’s upturned one, and his thumb traced over the wrist where the IV fluids were still attached, Misha closed his fingers around Jensen’s hand and held it like a comfort object. Jensen smiled in spite of it all.

“Listen, Mish…”

“Shhhh.” Misha’s eyes were closed, and his voice was more level and calm than it had been for hours. “Just… lay with me?”

“Of course.”

***

The old way was stupid.

It was stupid and lonely and, if Misha was being completely honest, had never actually existed before. It wasn’t an old way. It was a new way. It was a way of moving forward with life that put up walls to block out feelings that he either didn’t know what to do with or was too afraid to face. Or both.

Probably both.

Almost definitely both.

On his first day of unemployment, Misha didn’t pick up his phone at all. He went for a run; he cooked for the sake of cooking; he had slow, sensual sex with Vicki, and he played on the floor with West. He drank two fingers of good whiskey and went to bed early, and got up at 2AM when West started to fuss. They ended up running circles through the living room for an hour - West pushing his walking toy and Misha trailing behind - until the boy wore himself out. Then Misha picked him up and they ended up passed out on the couch, West on his belly on Misha’s chest.

For about a week, this was the status quo for them, and Misha actually came to expect and enjoy all of it - even that hour in the middle of the night with his son. He settled into the comfort of this new normal. Sometimes it felt so good he could almost completely ignore the ache in his chest whenever he glanced at his phone and noticed that he had a text from Jensen.

And then there was a message.  _ Hey _ , it said.  _ You should bring the fam down to Brentwood this weekend. We can go for a swim, maybe have some grownup time _ .

It sounded all well and good, but fate seemed to have Misha outside of her favor, because instead of awesome, drunken sex and maybe an actual conversation about where they were going to go from here, West stood up on the pool deck, took his first unassisted steps, and promptly tumbled into the pool, and that killed just about any chance of sex that might have existed before it happened.

The convention calendar meant they saw each other one more time in August, and then not until October, when the weather had gone cold and gray and it ached every time Misha looked at Jensen, because he couldn’t get past the longing of wanting things he couldn’t have.

Chicago was even colder than Toronto had been, and maybe it was the cold that had Misha downing more whiskey than he should have before seeking out Jensen that Friday evening.

“Goddammit, Misha…”

“Please. Just. Please.”

It was different, this last time. If “sad lovemaking” was a thing, their activities that evening were the very definition of it.

Somewhere between the somber mood and Misha’s muted buzz and the overwhelming ache in his chest was the reason why Misha did what he did afterward, which was to snap a picture on his phone of Jensen, stark naked and looking subdued and pensive.

He zoomed in on Jensen’s nose before posting it to his Twitter account.

The next morning, he woke up alone in his own hotel bed without any memory of how he got there. A text from Jensen told him to check his Twitter posts.

He deleted it, but the damage was done.

_ I’m sorry _ , he texted.  _ About everything _ .

_ You should be. _

“Fuck.” He had things to do; he couldn’t just stay in bed and wallow in his own stupidity all day.

But he could do it for a little while.


	11. The Old Vices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still following the Breakup Theory pretty closely here. Chapter heads up for unhealthy coping mechanisms (drugs, alcohol, sex) and mention of Misha/Darius FWB.

_ October 2011 _

Asylum was an absolute shit-show.

He took Darius with him to the UK, and they spent most of their spare time either drinking or fucking, and in one case, fucking while messed up on something Darius had acquired that Misha didn’t ask about.

Being with Darius was cathartic, because it was never soft or gentle, and it hadn’t meant anything other than sex in a long time. It was what he’d tried to have with Jensen - sex for the sake of sex, to have human contact and to scratch an itch. He listened to Misha ramble about how he’d fucked things up with Jensen, how he missed Jensen, how he… Jensen, Jensen, Jensen. He didn’t judge or criticize. He held Misha when he needed to be held, fucked Misha when he needed to be fucked, and kept him well-supplied with food and alcohol throughout the weekend.

On the very last day, he woke up to the sounds of Darius already moving about their hotel room, packing up and getting ready to head home.

He was sober for the first time since about an hour after they’d arrived, and he took a deep breath and thought back over the past few days.

God, he’d been an asshole.

“Darius?”

“Good morning, Sunshine. You want room service, or nah?”

He grimaced. He might be sober, but his stomach was sour from days of a horrible diet and a worse sleeping pattern. “In a while,” he said at last, and then rolled to his side and patted the bed. “Come lay with me?”

Darius complied without admonishing him about the plane they needed to catch or the fact that Misha had spent the entire long weekend vacillating between being a useless lump and being an asshole. But once he’d spooned himself around Misha and several minutes had passed since the last time either of them had adjusted their position for comfort, he spoke. “You’ve been an absolute turd this weekend, Mish.”

“I know.” Misha sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about me, man, I’ve got tough skin and I know you. Your fans, though. They deserved better.”

“I’m--” the second apology died on his tongue. “I know.”

“I haven’t seen you this messed up since you and Vick called it quits with your girl. And even that… even that wasn’t  _ this _ . This is as broken as I’ve ever seen you.” Misha didn’t know quite how to respond to that, so he just pressed his lips into a thin line and waited. “Do you want me to have Jensen murdered? Because I can do that. I know people.”

“No, no-- it’s.” If his stomach had been sour before, it absolutely twinged now, as he contemplated the truth. “He-- he didn’t hurt me.” He felt Darius tense behind him, and he couldn’t fault his friend for that, he supposed. “ _ I  _ hurt  _ him _ . I was… afraid.”

“Well, shit, Misha. I thought I was fucking you through a broken heart all weekend. Now you’re telling me I should’ve been laying down the law?”

“It’s what Jensen would’ve done.” The ache was back. It had been mostly absent through the weekend, buried under booze and sex, but now it was back, surging up through his sternum, straight to his heart. “I fucked up, Darius, and I don’t-- I don’t know how to-- I’m not even sure it’s possible, I--”

“Shhhhh.” He felt Darius sigh and then pull him tighter. One hand came up and started petting Misha’s hair. “So if this isn’t a case of your heart being broken by a lover, and more of a case of you wanting something you’re not sure you can have… what is it that you want?”

“I want, um. I want. To not be afraid to admit that I need…” He hesitated, and a blush crept up into his cheeks as he fumbled for how to word what came next. “I need him. I need him in ways I’ve never wanted anyone before, even you, even Vicki, and it scares me to death.”

“Woah. I mean, I’m just the helpful best friend, but… more than your wife?”

“Not more, I guess. Just…  _ differently _ .” 

“Differently.”

“ _ Yes _ .” He rolled his eyes. “He-- it’s-- complicated.”

“Misha.” Darius leaned in and kissed Misha’s forehead, and Misha couldn’t help feeling a bit like a small child in need of coddling in that moment. But then he said, “Falling in love with your Dominant is nothing to be afraid of, especially when your wife and his wife are more than willing to let that happen,” and nope, this was definitely an adults-only conversation.

“How-- how did you--”

“Call it a hunch.”

“You didn’t…” A guilty look passed over Darius’ face, and he bit his lower lip. “You didn’t.”

“ _ Vicki _ . I talked to  _ Vicki _ . Not Jensen. I would never-- but Mish, I was worried about you.”

Misha hit him anyway, for good measure. Then he rolled off the bed and started looking around for his pants. “So you think I should talk to him, huh?”

“I do.” A pause, and Misha looked up to make eye contact. “Do you need me to order you to do it?”

“You’re. An asshole.”

He pulled on his pants, and they moved about mostly in companionable silence, packing their things, getting ready to go home.

Misha tried not to think about how he wished Darius had ordered him to do it. He tried not to think about how he was probably going to ignore it anyway.

A week passed after Birmingham. He didn’t call Jensen. He didn’t text Jensen. He didn’t… anything.

But the world seemed to be moving around him, changing things without his say-so. He’d been home from Birmingham for two weeks when the call came.

“There’s been a change of plans,” Sera’s voice said.  _ And a tank in ratings _ , he thought, but he kept that to himself. “We’d like to bring Castiel back. What do you say?” 

He thought about saying no. But then he looked down at West, asleep in his lap. He thought about his fans, whom he knew missed Castiel terribly. And he thought about Jensen, and all of the things surrounding Jensen, and he wondered if maybe this was his chance to make everything right again.

“Tell me what you have in mind.”


	12. The Old Feelings

_ March 2012 _

The first day Misha was back on set, it was weird. Not bad, not good, just fucking  _ weird _ .

Rachel was there, too, and Cas — Misha — was wearing ass-hugging tan slacks and a too-tight sweater in his memory-lost characterization of “Emmanuel.” And one of Cas’ lines delivered to Rachel was, “Is that a flirtation?” with the stupidly adorable Cas head tilt and Jensen just  _ could not  _ with the way Misha’s eyes flitted to him as they filmed that part.

_ Fuck _ .

Between takes, things were tense but civil. Misha didn’t come to Jensen’s trailer and Jensen didn’t go to his. But in the wee hours of the morning when they were finally cut for the night, Misha caught his eye. “Jensen?”

Jensen’s heart jumped in his chest. “Y—yeah?”

There was enough of a hesitation that Jensen thought maybe Misha wasn’t going to say anything more, or that maybe he’d imagined the other man saying his name in the first place. But then, “It’s really good to see you again.”

“You too, Misha.”

“How are you?”

Jensen shrugged, hands flinging out to the sides. “You know. Gettin’ along.” Fuck it. “I missed you.”

Misha’s eyes darted away, to the ground, and then to the distance. “I… still miss you.”

Fuck his stupid heart for the way it sped up at those words, at that little glimmer of hope. “I… I can’t… Misha…”

“I know.”

And that was it. Misha left for the parking lot, head ducked down like a rejected puppy. And Jensen’s stupid heart clenched so hard it hurt. 

He stomped down the urge to go after him, swallowed back his emotions, and went in search of Jared and Clif.

***

“How was it?”

Misha pressed up against his wife in bed. He’d thought her asleep when he got home, the house dark and quiet as it was, but she’d surprised him by rolling over to face him as soon as he’d joined her under the covers. Now, he settled into the bed in the circle of her arms and hummed at the sleepiness in her voice. “Fine,” he started. 

The room was pitch-dark, but the way she said, “Dimitri,” he knew she was leveling him with an unamused stare.

He sighed. “I don’t know how to say… everything.” He sounded as resigned as he felt. “It’s just so much.”

“If you’re going back to work, maybe you should start with a small step. Be his friend.”

“We  _ are  _ friends.” A pause. “I think?”

“Are you?” When he didn’t reply, she cuddled closer beneath the covers and lightly kissed his chin. “Start there.”

There were no more words - just the warm embrace of his one and only sure thing, keeping him grounded on a cold January night. 

He had two more scenes and a wardrobe change the next day, and at one point he found himself watching Jared and Jensen with a wistful smile. Jensen seemed confident. Assured.

Dominant.

That last one was unbidden, and Misha tried really hard to shake it, but it wouldn’t leave, and he felt his face heating up with realization.  _ Be friends _ , Vicki had said. But could he, if he still had feelings? 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Misha shook his head to bring himself back to reality as Jensen strode toward him, a bottle of water in his hand. He drank from the bottle and Misha tried very hard not to get caught up in the bob of Jensen’s Adam’s apple. “Nah.”  _ Be his friend _ . “I was just thinking how much I, you know. Missed all of this. It’s nice to be back.”

Jensen nodded and offered a small smile. “I meant what I said yesterday. It’s good to have you back, man.”

Silence, again. Then, out of the blue, Jensen asked, “When’s Vicki due?” And Misha couldn’t help but laugh, because all things considered the answer was hilarious.

“October 1st.”

Jensen accepted the answer at face value, but there was a change in his facial features as realization set in. “Wasn’t… that…?”

“West’s? Yeah. Guess we’re nothing if not consistent.” He wiped a hand over his face and chuckled again.

“Guess so.” Jensen’s chin dipped and he looked down at his own lap for a second. Then he got up abruptly and settled instead into Jared’s chair, which was between Misha’s and his own. “We’re, uh. Trying. Danneel and me,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed. “Have been for a few months. Nothin’ stuck yet but I, uh. I want… We’re hopeful.”

“That’s… congrats, I guess.” But of course the thought of Jensen trying to knock his wife up caused Misha’s mind to drift to exactly how that sort of thing happened, to Jensen and Danneel, both of them tan and fit and fucking gorgeous, rolling together between the sheets. He shifted and cleared his throat.  _ Be. His. Friend. _ “They’re a lot of work,” he offered with a smirk that he hoped came off as a little smug.

“Yeah, well, I guess we figured if you could do it twice, we could at least manage one.” Jensen was chuckling now, and he looked away. “I don’t know why I told you that,” he said, turned away from Misha and in a voice so quiet that Misha barely heard it. “Jared doesn’t even know.”

Something fluttered under Misha’s ribs. He tried to push it down, but when he opened his mouth, what came out was, “Must be muscle memory. We had a lot of trust between us, once.”

Jensen let out an audible sigh. “What happened to us, Mish? I-- I-- I keep trying to think, and I just can’t figure out what--”

“Honestly?” Because really, he had nothing left to lose except his pride, so why not just lay it out. “I fell stupidly in love, messed everything up, lost my job, got drunk, committed an entirely stupid breach of trust, and then… time, I guess. Time happened.”

“You f-- Mish.” Jensen was looking around furtively, as though searching for a place to hide. Given Misha’s revelation, maybe he was. But then he said, “Fuck,” and when he looked back up at Misha, there were tears in his eyes. “I fell, too, I-- I loved you, I did, of course I did. You made a mess of my head and I just-- fuck, they’re gonna call me back to work and I’m gonna catch hell for messin’ up my makeup, but I…”

“Did you know that when you cry, your inner Texan starts coming out of your voice?”

Jensen rolled his eyes and huffed a laugh in spite of things. “Misha.”

“Sorry.” He paused. Looked down at his hands. “You did, huh?”

A long pause. Long enough that Misha’s eyes wandered, because this was probably it. Jensen didn’t love him anymore, didn’t want to go back to what they had, didn’t want…

But then a quiet Texas accent said, “Do,” from his left, and it was as though Misha was being called home. “I do. Never stopped.”

“Never stopped,” he echoed. Their eyes met, and Misha turned his left hand palm-up in his hand.

When Jensen took it between both of his, that’s when Misha broke.


	13. The New Foundation

If their lives were a sappy rom-com movie, the love confession would’ve magically fixed everything and they’d have spent the next weekend shopping for commitment rings or whatever the fuck you get for your polyamorous kink partner when you finally stop being dumbasses and admit you want something more than just (really good) sex.

In actual fact, it was the middle of the day and they were on set, and when Jared came back he unceremoniously dumped Jensen out of his chair, and whatever moment they were having was broken. Jensen got his makeup re-touched, Misha mulled over the remainder of his pages for the day. 

It wasn’t until later, much later, after Jensen was cut loose for the day and returned to his trailer to find Misha sitting casually on the couch as though he belonged there, that they got a chance to revisit the subject of… well, of  _ them _ .

He looked at Misha and Misha looked back, a small smile on his lips, a blush in his cheeks, and for half a second it  _ was  _ just like a movie, like maybe he should just sit down and start kissing Misha into oblivion before the end credits rolled. But again, that wasn’t what this was and that couldn’t be how it went. He mirrored Misha’s smile and his blush, feeling more like a kid with no idea what to do next than an experienced, polyamorous dominant, hopelessly in love with the man in front of him.

He started with the simplest action: He sat down next to Misha on the couch. “I love you,” he said softly, holding Misha’s gaze. “I-- I love you. I’ve loved you since-- since I can’t even say.”

Misha’s eyes were sad, and he cast them down to where his hands wrung in his lap as he spoke. “You don’t have to…”

“Are you kidding? I’ve-- I  _ do  _ have to. Now that I said it, I’m not sure if I can stop.” He chuckled a bit, blushing even hotter in spite of himself. 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything sooner. I was…” Misha sighed. “We had an agreement.”

“OK, Castiel.” The joke lightened the mood somewhat, and Misha looked up, the right side of his mouth crooked up in an adorable half-smile. Jensen reached with his right hand and took Misha’s left, effectively stopping the nervous wringing. “Misha.”

Misha looked up, all puppy-dog eyes and a nervous bite of his lower lip. He said nothing, so Jensen took his free left hand to palm Misha’s cheek so he couldn’t look away.

“I don’t know… I don’t know what to do with these feelings. An’... an’ I get if you’re scared, man, I’m fucking  _ terrified _ . But I want-- I want to try. No contracts, no deadline, no-- man if you just wanna cuddle and watch movies under a fleece blanket with no funny stuff, I’m fine with that. I just want  _ you _ . However I can have you.”

Misha cried again, for the second time that day: Quiet breath-hitching sobs and slow-rolling tears, and this time there would be no interruptions, so Jensen pulled him close, first into a kiss, and then into a hug so pure he could feel something taking shape in it. Something new was starting here, in this hug. Something that was different from what they had before -- a foundation. An understanding.

A beginning.

***

Clif dropped them off together at Jensen’s Vancouver condo, and Jensen savored every second of the early morning hours, stripping them both slowly, kissing every inch of Misha, and then honest-to-God  _ making love _ to him, at an unhurried pace that said they had until the end of the world.

This part? This part was  _ just  _ like the movies.

It happened to be a Thursday, with Misha not expected on set the next day. Jensen, however, had a 1400 call time. He took the time before falling asleep to set an alarm for 11AM, and to text Clif for a noon pickup. Then he fell asleep, Misha heavy and content in his arms, as the first rays of light were streaming through his bedroom window.

He woke the same way, as though neither of them had moved in the few hours they’d been asleep, and he knew he was going to be a nightmare for the makeup ladies today. Should probably stop on the way in and pick up brownies or something as an advance apology.

Then he sat up a bit on his elbow and peered down at Misha, who was still dead to the world. A slow smile spread across his face. “Worth it,” he mumbled, and kissed the bolt of Misha’s jaw.

“Mmmm,” was the muted reply. “Whsss?”

“You are.”

Misha cracked open one eye. “Sap.”

“I thought that was your job.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Misha’s mouth. “We can both be saps.”

Jensen grinned down at him. “I love you.”

“Mmmmhmmm. Love you too.”

“You’re so cute this way.” God, he really was deep in it, wasn’t he? But he couldn’t stop smiling, and he couldn’t stop the warmth that bubbled up from deep in his belly as he laid here with Misha.

His backup alarm dinged insistently, and he groaned and jabbed at his phone as though it had personally offended him. “I should shower,” he grumbled as he weaved his limbs around Misha in an octopus grip.

“Mmmhmm. You stink like sex,” Misha replied, and although it was half-muffled into his pillow, Jensen could tell there was a purr of satisfaction in the statement. He swatted Misha’s ass.

“Brat,” he scolded, and nipped at Misha’s earlobe.

Misha stilled, and Jensen tensed, wondering if maybe he’d gone too far, too fast. He’d promised they could just have a “normal” relationship, if that was what Misha wanted, if--

His train of thought was cut short by Misha’s body convulsing in a fit of laughter before he rolled over and climbed on top of Jensen, pinning him to the bed with a toe-curling kiss. “ _ Your _ brat,” the words bubbled over Jensen’s lips in happy little puffs. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”

The warm feeling in Jensen’s gut swelled up his chest and through his bloodstream, and he chuckled into the space between their faces before capturing Misha’s lips with his and rolling their bodies to pin his partner beneath him.

Partner.

Yeah.

He liked the sound of that.


	14. The Forever Forever (Epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *screams in Cockles* It's the end! I hope you all enjoyed getting to see our boys from a slightly different perspective. I sure did enjoy writing it. :) Here's a time-jumped epilogue, based in 2019, so sweet it'll rot your teeth.

_ February 2019 _

“Stop. Fidgeting.”

“I’m am  _ not _ \--”

“Misha, you are more jumpy right now than when you and I got married.”

He rolled his eyes as Vicki adjusted his tie for the fifth time. “Yeah, well, I’d known you forever, you knew how much of a nerd I was. I wasn’t trying to impress you anymore.” He hissed as she yanked the tie tighter than necessary - on purpose, he suspected. “Ow.”

“Misha.” Then she flattened her palms against his chest and sighed, and in the next breath, her face softened. “Dmitri,” she said, and smiled. Something about that melted away the edges of his unease. It always had, when she was soft, and she smiled, and called him by his given name, and she knew that. She knew everything. “I love you.”

“I love you,” he murmured, dipping his chin to rest his forehead against hers. Their arms came around each others’ waists, a gesture as natural as breathing. “Thank you for… everything.”

“I’m so incredibly happy for you.” Her breath hitched, taking Misha a bit by surprise. He was the one who lost his emotional shit at the drop of a hat, not her.

“I’m scared.”

“I’m not.” She looked up to hold his gaze, and there were definitely unshed tears shining in her eyes. “The two of you have something special. You always have.”

“ _ You and I _ have something special.” When he said it, he took both of her hands in his and stared unblinking into her eyes, trying to pour his emotions from his heart to hers. “We always have.”

“We always will. We’ve talked about this, Misha.” She pulled back and used her hands to physically turn his body, so that he was looking into the master bedroom’s full-length mirror. “What you have with Jensen doesn’t diminish the love between us. It multiplies it.”

He stared into the mirror for a long moment, meditating on what he could see, and what he was about to do. On the vows he had taken, and those he was about to take. And then he let out a loud exhale and let his face slip into a smile. “I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth.”

“I think so.” Her smile mirrored his, and they were silent again, together. Then Vicki took his hand and squeezed it. “OK, nerd. Let’s get you to your man.”

***

“Jensen. You’re pacing.”

Jensen looked up at Danneel with pursed lips as he stopped in his tracks. He wanted to protest, except that he had very clearly been pacing, so it’s not like he could deny it. “Sorry.”

She was standing in the doorway of the guest room of Misha and Vicki’s Los Angeles home. It made sense to do this here, they’d reasoned, because the weather was reliable and the home allowed for more privacy than anything in Bellingham or Austin or even Vancouver could afford them. There was a certain sense of anonymity to be found in a city full of famous faces. “He’s ready. Are you?”

He spun to face her, going for equal parts smooth and dramatic but probably failing on both counts. “Do I look ready?” He held his hands out on either side of himself and put on his Absolutely Most Charming smile.

She laughed and sauntered into the room, meeting him halfway as he took measured steps toward the door. “You look like you’re about to ralph.”

“This is the weirdest damn thing.” He shook his head and laughed to himself before stepping into the circle of his wife’s arms. “I never in a million years imagined my life going quite this way. I mean, hell, until just a few years ago I hadn’t even considered that this path existed. And then this fucker comes along and just--” He took a deep inhale and let it out slowly as he dipped forward to rest his head on her shoulder, eyes closed. “I’ve never been so happy. And I… thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She sounded almost reverent in the way she said it, and that just made Jensen shake his head again. The level of disbelief he felt… he understood why people wanted to pinch themselves when things were perfect. How did he get here? How was he so lucky? “I love him too.”

“I know.”

“But I love the way you love him even more.” She kissed him again, and Jensen let himself get lost in it for a long moment before she pulled away softly, looked into his eyes, and smiled almost wistfully. “Now come on, Hot Stuff. Let’s go get you hitched.”

***

“I have a precarious history with rings, you know.”

Jensen rolled his eyes as he tugged at his neck to loosen his tie. “Then stop fidgeting with it.”

“I am  _ not-- _ ”

Jensen groaned, more for dramatic effect than anything else, and turned on his heel to face Misha, stopping the smaller man in his tracks. They were barely inside the master bedroom - just barely far enough for Jensen to close and lock the door before trapping Misha’s body between the closed door and his own body. “ _ Stop _ ,” he commanded, a glare of challenge in his eyes, and his lips curled into a predatory smile when he heard Misha’s breath hitch. But the command was followed, and MIsha’s hands fell to his sides. “Good boy.” A kiss, then - deep and searching, celebratory. They were… something. They were  _ whole _ .

He hadn’t kissed Misha like this in weeks, thanks to their filming schedules that just didn’t seem to line up the way they would’ve liked, so he took his time, reacquainting himself with the depth and feel of Misha’s mouth, the slide of the other man’s tongue, the way Misha mewled and squirmed when he was ready for more. “Eager,” he murmured, backing off enough to grin down at Misha like a cat who’d trapped his mouse. “Sure you don’t just wanna kiss for a little while?”

Misha growled at him and surged back into the kiss. He took control of it, and Jensen let him, partly because it was nice and partly because he was laughing too hard to regain control of the situation right now. So he let Misha kiss him deep and hungry, and he let himself be maneuvered to the bed and pushed down on it before sobering and pulling back. “OK, first of all,” he said, bringing up his index finger to point at nothing in emphasis, “take your ring off and put it in the bedside table drawer. Do it,” he commanded, eyebrows up, “because if you lose that ring on the first night, I swear to God I am never buying you another one.”

Misha heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes, but he complied, rolling off of Jensen to remove his new commitment ring and place it in his bedside table drawer. Jensen took that moment to collect himself.

“Good. Now…” He smirked and pulled Misha to him by his lapels. When their lips met again, Jensen fully owned the kiss. He explored Misha’s mouth as his hands got to work, pushing off Misha’s suit jacket until it was a rumpled pile on the floor. He moved to the shirt buttons next, refusing to break the kiss even when he struggled to release the last few buttons. Then he pushed it off to join the jacket on the floor. 

The white undershirt he encountered next was met with a growl of frustration, and he pulled back just long enough to yank the shirt off over Misha’s head, sighing with relief when he was then met with an expanse of tan skin.

He kissed everywhere. Misha was murmuring something, not writhing and whimpering, but he was soft and compliant the way Jensen loved. It wasn’t until he reached the fly on Misha’s pants that he took a moment to lift his head, let his breath out in pants, and listen to the litany pouring from Misha’s lips.

“Mine,” he was saying. “Mine forever. Mine. Love you so much.”

Jensen stared at up at him in wonder, and when their eyes locked, he had to swallow around a lump in his throat. “Yours,” he breathed without breaking eye contact. He nuzzled his nose into Misha’s belly and then looked up again. “Mine.”

Misha smiled wistfully. “Yours.” He petted Jensen’s hair as Jensen’s fingers fiddled with Misha’s button and zipper. “The girls will be here soon.”

“I hope so. Don’t want them to miss this.”

Jensen laughed and nuzzled into Misha’s skin again, lower this time. “They’d kill us both.”

Misha laughed, too, and Jensen relished the way it bubbled up from deep inside. “Guess we better slow down a little, huh?”

“Well I mean, I was  _ trying  _ to tell you.” He lifted his eyebrows, but there was no heat in his tone. He popped Misha’s fly and pulled the zipper down, one tooth at a time. “Guess I’ll just have to… make my point.”

“Fuck…”

“But I do love you.”

“You’re a sadistic bastard.” Jensen hummed to himself as he set to work exposing Misha’s groin to his eyes and then working his mouth and tongue over Misha’s balls and inner thighs, hitting all the sensitive spots, avoiding his erection entirely. Misha writhed and whimpered and Jensen huffed warm breaths of laughter against the exposed skin. He nudged Misha’s legs further apart and nipped at a spot he loved, about halfway down Misha’s right thigh. He was settled into sucking a bruise into that same spot when a new voice met his ears.

“I see we’re just in time.”

Another voice, equally familiar to the first. “They really are a sight, aren’t they?”

“We’re so lucky.”

There was a clink of glassware, and Jensen sighed happily. “OK, Mish.” He swirled his tongue over the newly forming bruise. “Ask nicely.”

“Please?”

“Please…?”

“Please make love to me, Jensen.” A pause. “Sir.”

Jensen happily shook himself out of his shirt, tie, and undershirt, but he left his bottom half clothed for now. After all, they were just getting started. “All in due time, Beautiful. All in due time.”

Because they did have time, didn’t they? Tonight, tomorrow, next week, next year.

A lifetime.

They were just getting started.


End file.
